Beer Cheese Dip Recipe

This creamy, salty, and smooth pub-style beer cheese dip is an easy appetizer recipe that’s ready in 15 minutes. Flavored with lager-style beer (or your favorite style), garlic, smoked paprika, a bit of dijon mustard, and lots of cheddar cheese, this robust dip is extra flavorful and awesome with homemade soft pretzels, fresh artisan bread, pitas, or celery.

Inspired by a trip to a brewery up in Vermont, I threw together this beer cheese dip over the holidays. I adapted it from my spicy nacho cheese sauce and didn’t have any intention of sharing the recipe on my website. After the first batch disappeared in 10 seconds and the second batch was gone in .02 seconds, I had a feeling I was onto something that couldn’t possibly be kept secret.

This Beer Cheese Dip Is:

  • Ready in 15 minutes
  • Wildly robust with deep flavor
  • Extra smooth and creamy
  • Pub-style and a snack you’d find at a brewery
  • Flavored with smoked paprika, garlic, and the slightest bit of dijon mustard
  • Totally customizable to whatever beer you enjoy
  • The best friend of soft pretzels everywhere (or soft pretzel bites!)



10 Ingredients in Beer Cheese Dip

Each ingredient has a job to do. I don’t recommend substitutions.

  1. Butter: Melt 2 Tablespoons of butter to begin. You can use salted or unsalted. No need to bring it to room temperature first; the butter can come right from the refrigerator.
  2. Flour: 3 Tablespoons of flour soak up the butter and create a roux, a thick paste, which is the base of the entire dip.
  3. Whole Milk or Half-and-Half: In a slow and steady stream, whisk in milk or half-and-half. The mixture will look chunky at first, but will come together as you continue to whisk over heat.
  4. Beer: Whisk in your beer of choice. See Best Beer to Use in Cheese Dip below.
  5. Worcestershire Sauce: The remaining ingredients are for flavor. Worcestershire sauce adds a deep and unbeatable flavor. No replacements here. Just a small amount provides big flavor, just as it does in crab cakes, black bean burgers, and chicken meatballs. 
  6. Dijon Mustard: Want this to taste like beer cheese dip from your favorite brewery or pub? Add a bit of dijon mustard like we do with ham and potato casserole or even deviled eggs. This dip does not taste like mustard— my husband does not like mustard and loves this. Without it, the recipe tastes like it’s missing something.
  7. Garlic Powder: Adds flavor.
  8. Smoked Paprika: Even more flavor.
  9. Salt: Flavor flavor flavor.
  10. Cheddar Cheese: I like using a combination of white cheddar and regular sharp cheddar cheese, but you can use all of either. The most important step? Freshly shredding your cheese at home. Store-bought pre-shredded cheese is much drier than freshly shredded. You need the freshest cheese for this dip!

Just use a box grater for the cheese. This kitchen essential comes in handy when you need shredded cheese for cheese bread, carrots for carrot cake, grated frozen butter for scones, apples and carrots for morning glory muffins, zucchini for zucchini bread, and more.


How to Make Beer Cheese Dip

  1. Grate the cheese. Set aside.
  2. Melt butter on the stove, add flour, whisk in milk, then whisk in everything else.
  3. That’s it, you’re done.
  4. The sauce is thin when it comes off the stove, but will thicken after a few minutes.