I always thought "free as in free beer" was a way to make a distinction between freeware and free/libre open source software. That's how the FSF seems to use it [O]
"free as in beer" vs "free as in speech" is already such a perfectly clear way to distinguish between the two meanings of the word "free", that it boggles me that people still manage to be confused by it. That IS already the simple intuitive non-academic small-vocabulary no-riddles way to illuminate it.
"free as in beer" is not about "it's a way to trick you into eventually spending more so it's not really free"
It just means something you don't pay for, that's it.
Maybe another way to say it is "free as in money" vs "free as in permission". I hate how that washes the very last atom of color from it but I guess that's just what some people need.
[0]: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html