We’ve taken this southern favorite and made it vegan! This vegan beer cheese is a must have for get togethers and takes just 10 minutes to throw together. Paired with our 1 hr vegan pretzels for the ultimate combo!
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If you are from the southern United States, then you have likely had beer cheese or at least seen it on the menus of your favorite bars and restaurants. Now you don’t even have to leave your home and you can make this a completely vegan beer cheese recipe.
This vegan cheese sauce makes a great go-to for parties, late night snacks, and more.
What’s great about this recipe is that it’s allergen friendly and it’s not made with potatoes and carrots. No shade to those that like vegan cheese made from potatoes and carrots, it’s just not our thing.
Now you can make it at home, easily, whenever you want and know exactly what the ingredients are that goes into the recipe.
This is so easy to make! Just 10 minutes total time. And can be completely Top 8 Allergen Free.
VEGAN BEER CHEESE INGREDIENTS:
Below are notes about the ingredients before we get into the full recipe located lower in this post on how to make this easy vegan cheese sauce:
- Butter beans – This is the base of our vegan cheese. It provides a creamy texture and you’ll be shocked that you can’t even taste them once everything is combined.
- Vegan beer – while most beers are vegan, there are some that aren’t processed in a way consistent with a vegan lifestyle, such as containing honey. Many of the top ones are. You don’t need a lot and it adds a great flavor! You can use a zero-alcohol version if you just want the flavor
- Nutritional yeast – this helps us get a cheesy flavor without adding any processed vegan cheese
- Diced Jalapeños – adds flavor and a bit of spice. You can add a little or a lot depending on your preferences.
- Lemon juice – A little acid helps bring the flavors of this dish together
- Vegan butter – adds richness and depth to this vegan beer cheese that you would expect from a cheese sauce
- Oat flour – helps thicken our sauce and keeps it at a great consistency
- Dairy Free milk – choose a neutral tasting unsweetened, unflavored variety for the best results. We love using creamier non-dairy milks like oat and soy.
- Spices – We have created a unique blend of seasonings that we think pair perfectly with this dish
SUBSTITUTIONS AND VARIATIONS:
- Butter beans – cannellini beans or great northern beans could be used as well, we just find butter beans
- Vegan beer – you could omit this if you want.
- Nutritional yeast – bagged vegan cheese could be used instead – we’d recommend 1 to 1 ½ cups of it.
- Diced Jalapeños – you could omit, swap with an adobo pepper instead, or use some drained canned tomatoes and chilies (like Rotel)
- Oat flour – another gluten free single flour like almond could be used. We do not recommend any raw all purpose flours unless you heat treated them first.
Frequently Asked Questions for Vegan Beer Cheese:
We recommended making your vegan cheese sauce in a high powered blender. You literally pour all the ingredients into your blender and then blend for 5 minutes. The result is a creamy vegan beer cheese that is already warmed.
If you don’t drink, you have two options – omit the beer entirely and just have a vegan cheese sauce or you can buy a 0% alcohol beer. Doing this still gives you the flavor of the beer but there’s no alcohol in it.
If using an alcoholic beer, note that this recipe is not actually cooked, so all the beer you put it is not cooked off at all. If making this for kids to consume, we recommend using a 0% alcohol beer. You get all the taste without the alcohol content.
Most beer is vegan however there are some that aren’t. To make sure that your favorite is, we recommend checking our Barnivore.com
We love butter beans for this vegan beer cheese recipe. They make a creamier vegan cheese sauce from anything else we’ve seen. However, any type of white bean would work – such as Great Northern or cannellini beans.
We have tested this recipe with oat flour and almond flour. You could use other gluten free flours like chickpea also.
However, if you use all-purpose flour, we recommend that you make in a skillet instead of in a blender or food processor so that the flour actually gets cooked and you eliminate the risk of salmonella. Alternatively, you could heat treat just the flour and then process in a blender. Follow the steps for heat treating flour here.
While we think a blender is the easiest and fastest way to make this dairy free beer cheese recipe, it isn’t the only way to make it.
You could also use a food processor by adding all the ingredients together and blending until smooth and thickened.
Another alternative would be to make on the stovetop using a skillet. In order to do this, you would first need blend or mash the beans in some way to make as smooth as possible. Then, melt the butter over medium heat and then add your flour. If you are use all-purpose flour, this is the method you want to use unless heat treating it first.
Whisk together the flour and butter. Then, pour in your milk and stir together. Finally add the remaining ingredients and let cook over medium low until thickened and well combined.
Make sure that you are using a soy free dairy free butter like Flora or Earth Balance soy free in the red tub. In addition, make sure that you are using a Top 8 Free milk like oat, flax, or hemp. To be honest, we prefer using oat.
Yes! It heats back up well on the stove for a few minutes until heated through or in the microwave by warming at 30 second intervals. Must consume within 48 hours because the beer breaks down the other ingredients otherwise.
What are ways that I can use dairy free beer cheese?
Obviously you can just spoon it into your mouth, but you also could use tortilla chips. Some other ideas for how to use this vegan beer cheese are:
- 1 Hour Copycat Auntie Anne’s Vegan Pretzels
- Pour over Instant Pot Vegan Tex Mex Rice
- On top of your Dairy Free Nachos
- Vegan Taco Casserole instead of the shredded cheese
- As a sauce on the best vegan black bean burger
- Vegan Chorizo Burrito Bowls
- Make tacos with our Walnut Taco Meat or Sweet Potato and Black Bean tacos
- Mix in or on top over our Jackfruit and Black Bean Enchiladas
- Perfectly on top of our Mexican Stuffed Peppers
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🥳 Get the Full Recipe
Vegan Beer Cheese
Ingredients
- 1 15oz can Butter Beans, drained and rinsed
- 1 4oz can diced jalapenos (see notes for spice level)
- 1 cup unsweetened dairy free milk
- ⅔ cup vegan beer
- 2 teaspoon vegan worcestershire sauce
- ½ teaspoon dijon mustard
- ½ cup nutritional yeast
- ¼ cup vegan butter
- 2 tablespoon oat flour
- ½ teaspoon fresh lemon juice
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon chili powder
- ½ teaspoon cumin
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- ¼ teaspoon smoked paprika
- ¼ teaspoon turmeric
- ⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper
- ⅛ teaspoon onion powder
Instructions
- Pour all ingredients into a high powered blender*.
- Blend for 5 minutes or until a thickened, creamy, well-combined sauce forms.
- Serve warm.
- Top with diced tomatoes and/or jalapenos to serve
- Store leftovers in an air tight container. Consume without 48 hours.
is this a beer cheese recipe or nacho cheese? in one part after the recipe it says it’s nacho cheese. i’ve never seen beer cheese with jalapeños or tomatoes added?? can we leave all that spice out?
Sorry for the confusion where it said nacho. It’s a beer cheese. There’s no tomatoes in the recipe, just an optional recommendation on top. We do believe the ingredients as written are delicious, but you can try as you desire
I really love most of your recipes.
This one somehow didn’t work out at all, all I got was a yellow soup. I wonder why that is? I couldn’t find butter beans so I used regular white beans and don’t own a food processor so had to use a hand blender. Does it need to be heated maybe, to make it less soupy?
I’d be happy to provide you some help here! So the hand mixer is all good to use, but butter beans add thickness that other beans don’t. Like the white beans are softer and wetter. What you could do for the next round is use less liquid to start (since you may have issues locating butter beans in the future). If you run into an issue, heat the mixture on low in a saucepan until it thickens because this helps activate the starches (this will help thicken it). You could even add 1–2 tbsp flour when cooking but use a whisk to completely blend it and cook for a few to heat the flour through. Hope this helps!
Just perfect. This beats any vegan nacho cheese I’ve ever had. It put my carrot and potato cheese to shame. Went great on my pretzels.
So happy to hear you enjoyed it
can i omit the butter i don’t use any oils or butter even if vegan also what is vegan beer i will surely try this sounds ddeeeeeelish!