When a destination creates a “trail” for visitors to follow, based on a food, you know it’s iconic. Writer Kathy Witt, our resident expert on Kentucky, takes us to a town to discover just what is beer cheese and where to go to get the real deal. Until you can experience it for yourself, make your own homemade version with a popular recipe we’ve included. 

Save this article and recipe to Pinterest to help you plan your own Beer Cheese experience. Photos courtesy Winchester Tourism and Kathy Witt.

Beer Cheese: How a town in Kentucky made cheese better

We all know that cheese makes everything better.

Have a cooking oops; douse it with cheese. Lose a boyfriend; throw down some cheese. Get a promotion; toast it with champagne and . . . cheese.

The only thing that could make cheese better would be to add beer to it. Which one brazen Kentucky town did about 85 years ago, earning for itself the title of Birthplace of Beer Cheese.

Located in central Kentucky, Winchester has a population of 18,600 residents, and its seems like a large percentage of them are involved in either making, serving or extolling the virtues of the creamy spread.

What is Beer Cheese? In the beginning, a match made in culinary heaven.

It all started in the 1930s when two first cousins hatched a plot to make their customers thirsty to increase drinks orders. So, they served a concoction called Joe Allman’s Snappy Cheese at Johnnie Allman’s Driftwood Inn restaurant.

“The result was a sharp cheddar cheese with a little kick,” Joe’s son, Tim Allman, writes in an account of the delicacy’s origins. “People would be given what we called ‘beer cheese’ in a small soufflé cup with saltine crackers, radishes and celery when they were greeted at their table or bar, before they put in their drink order.”

The scheme worked and put beer cheese on the menu – and Winchester on the map. Today, the Winchester/Clark County Beer Cheese Trail takes trailblazers on a culinary caper involving a Beer Cheese Log, 14 different venues and their individual specialties and a possible ambassadorship.

Hungry for more? Get a popular Kentucky Mac ‘n Cheese recipe. 

Mmm: Those signature beer cheese dishes

Experience a different atmosphere and vibe along the way, from Winchester’s first brewery at Abettor Brewing Company with its in-town open-air and patio seating to a combination farm-to-table restaurant and moonshine and bourbon distillery at Wildcat Willy’s, whose architectural anomalies depict a lineage that includes both “the old Williams Factory” of 1833 and the CME Church of Winchester from 1870 until 1926.

Full Circle Market, whose gluten-free recipe is a Beer Cheese Festival champ, ships its beer cheese all over the country – much of it headed to devotees in Las Vegas and Bozeman, MT. Beech Springs Farm Market, a vintage country store that looks much like it did when it was built nearly 100 years ago, is a fun place to poke around for a souvenir. Owner Mary Hendricks stocks the shelves and bins with local honey, jams, salsa, canvas totes and more.

Beech Springs Farmers Market photo courtesy Kathy Witt.

A small sandwich counter in the 1950s, today’s Gaunce’s Café & Deli is home of the famous Smitty’s Country Ham, named for the original owner, Carlton “Smitty” Gaunce. Going back ever further, Pilot View Mini Mart is a grocery/diner that was once a frontier stagecoach stop.

Signature dishes on the trail include Steak and Beer Cheese Omelet, Beer Cheese Biscuits served with gourmet jellies or preserves or a slice of Kentucky Proud sausage, Kentucky Hot Ham & Beer Cheese, Beer Cheese Quesadilla, Shrimp and Beer Cheese Grits, Beer Cheese Nachos and a Beer Cheese Platter with chips, pickles and few other surprises. Truly devoted fromagephiles can work their way through breakfast, lunch and dinner – not to mention an evening snack – with each piquant bite bringing them one mouthful closer to the coveted prize: an official T-shirt.

According to Julie Staton – Miss Julie to her regulars at the Pilot View – whipping up this ooey-gooey taste bud tantalizer is not simply popping open a cold one and pouring it into melted cheese.

“It’s in the wrist and how you mix,” says Staton. “That’s my magic.”

Pilot View Market’s Steak and Beer Cheese Omelet. Photo by Kathy Witt.

The Winchester Hot Brown Pizza, served at the Engine House Pizza Pub – located inside Winchester’s original fire station on land that was deeded in 1885 for this purpose – mashes together two Kentucky culinary powerhouses: the restaurant’s special-recipe Rough and Ready Beer Cheese, named after the fire brigade that once called the Engine House home, and the Hot Brown, that oh-so cheesy sensation spiked with crisp bacon and juicy tomatoes. The Beer Cheese Burger, one of two signature beer cheese dishes at Hall’s on the River, shows why the secret-recipe spread, combined with banana peppers made it the winner of 2020 Beer Cheese Week.

Hungry for more? Get the authentic recipe for Hot Brown.

A side of trivia

As trailblazers eat their way through the county, they’ll pick up some fun tidbits. Like the fact that Daniel Boone’s daughter, Jemima, along with two of her besties, was kidnapped near the site of the Waterfront Grill, which serves up a Grilled Beer Cheese Melt prepared on a salt block as its signature dish. Or that, on February 19, 1916, Helen Keller spoke to a large delegation at the circa 1873 Winchester Opera House, beautifully restored and today housing Loma’s at the Opera House on its first floor. (Three words: candied bacon crumbs. That’s what tops Loma’s signature beer cheese dish.)

Caseophiles – that’s cheese lovers to you and me – who are also devotees of TV will be interested to know that, when sampling the headlining dish at Woody’s Sports Bar & Grill, they can tune into 22 television sets. And the homemade potato chips topped with chili, chopped lettuce and jalapeno peppers and drizzled with warm beer cheese won’t be served by DJ at DJs Steakhouse because there is no DJ.

“When you come in, you should ask why,” urges Nancy Turner, executive director at the ‎Winchester-Clark County Tourism Commission.

JK’s Café at Forest Grove supposedly has the coldest Ale-8s in the county. Ale-8-One, another Winchester original and the only soft drink invented in Kentucky still in existence, is considered the state’s Official Soft Drink. (And by the way, its ginger-citrus flavor goes great with beer cheese.)

Cheese it up 

The Clark County Beer Cheese Trail is open year-round. The official Cheese Log may be downloaded here. Visit participating restaurants and receive a stamp at each location or track your progress on your mobile device by using the free Tour Winchester app and clicking on the Beer Cheese Trail icon. NOTE: Beer Cheese Trailblazers must accumulate a minimum of seven stamps to earn the Beer Cheese Trail T-shirt.

The title of Beer Cheese Ambassador will be conferred upon those sampling their way to 13 stops on the trail and they will be put into a drawing. The prize? Being a judge at the Winchester/Clark County’s Beer Cheese Festival – the fourteenth stop on the Beer Cheese Trail. The festival is celebrated annually on the second Saturday of the month – not long after National Cheese Day, which is feted on June 4 each year.

Want to know how to make Beer Cheese?

Woody’s Sports Bar and Grill Beer Cheese*

Ingredients:

1 TBS cayenne
1 TBS fresh garlic, minced
1 TBS red pepper flakes
1 lb. sharp cold-pack cheddar
1 lb. Velveeta, room temperature
1 TBS Worcestershire sauce
3/4 bottle (8 oz) Miller Lite beer

Method: 

Add all the ingredients but the beer to the work bowl of a food processor and start blending. Add the beer gradually until the mixture is smooth.

*Recipe from The Beer Cheese Book by Garin Pirnia. Purchase the book on Amazon using our affiliate link.

Make your own homemade beer cheese with this recipe. Photo courtesy Winchester Tourism.