Guinness BBQ Sauce

This beer BBQ sauce has so many layers of sweet flavours. Perfect for grilled or smoked chicken, ribs, pork chops and so much more!

Easy homemade beer BBQ sauce, this recipe has instructions for how to make bbq sauce with beer. Great for grilling or smoking chicken, ribs, pork chops.

Guinness Draught is my favourite beer. This Irish dry stout that has a sweet caramel flavour with a hint of coffee, Guinness has been used in many different recipes from desserts to bread to main dishes. This Guinness BBQ sauce has the wonderful flavour of this unique beer and it goes perfect on ribs, chicken, pork chops and more!

I love the flavour that Guinness brings to food. Check out this Guinness Bread recipe.

A jar of BBQ sauce next to a can of beer.

I love making BBQ sauce with beer in the ingredients. There is not much beer actually needed, because even a little bit of beer will give that enhanced flavour to the sauce. Along with the beer, there is onions, garlic, molasses, brown sugar and tomato paste. These all come together to make a sweet BBQ sauce packed with serious flavours.

Great recipes to use this sauce

A brush with BBQ sauce resting on a jar.

It is very simple to make this sauce. I sauté the onions and garlic with butter in the saucepan. Once the onions are tender and transparent, add the rest of the ingredients, except the tomato paste. Bring to a boil and let simmer for about 10 minutes.

The last ingredient is the tomato paste. Whisk that in the sauce until it is smooth. Lower the heat and allow the sauce to simmer for 30 minutes. The aroma in the kitchen will be amazing.

Once the sauce has simmered, remove from the heat. The final step is to puree the sauce. While it is possible to use a hand immersion blender, I prefer to use a stand blender. This does a better job making the sauce nice and smooth.

Let the sauce cool slightly and then pour it into the blender jar. Process until very smooth.

BBQ sauce on a brush.

Other BBQ Sauce Recipes

This Guinness BBQ sauce is so good! Here are some other recipes with different flavour profiles.

Guinness BBQ Sauce

Easy homemade beer BBQ sauce, this recipe has instructions for how to make bbq sauce with beer. Great for grilling or smoking chicken, ribs, pork chops.
4.41 out of 5
10 reviews
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Easy homemade beer BBQ sauce, this recipe has instructions for how to make bbq sauce with beer. Great for grilling or smoking chicken, ribs, pork chops.
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour
Total Time: 1 hour 10 minutes
Servings: 16

Ingredients

  • 2 tbsp butter
  • 2 onions , minced
  • 5 garlic cloves , minced
  • 1/2 cup molasses
  • 1 cup Guinness beer
  • 1/2 cup white vinegar
  • 1 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp black pepper
  • 1/2 tsp cayenne
  • 1 cup tomato paste ,(8oz can)

Instructions

  • Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the onion, and garlic to the saucepan and saute until they are tender and beginning to caramelize, about 8 minutes.
  • Add the molasses, beer, brown sugar, vinegar, salt, pepper and cayenne Bring to a boil. Let it cook with a low rolling boil for about 10 minutes. Stir occasionally so that nothing sticks to the bottom of the saucepan.
  • Stir in the tomato paste and lower the heat. Let the sauce simmer for 30 minutes, stirring every few minutes.
  • Remove from the heat and let the sauce cool to room temperature.
  • Puree in a blender until smooth.

Nutrition

Per serving:

Calories: 149kcalCarbohydrates: 33gProtein: 1gFat: 2gSaturated Fat: 1gCholesterol: 4mgSodium: 298mgFiber: 1gSugar: 30g

Nutrition Disclaimer

Categories

Easy homemade beer BBQ sauce, this recipe has instructions for how to make bbq sauce with beer. Great for grilling or smoking chicken, ribs, pork chops.

Did you try this recipe?

Leave a comment and let me know how it turned out. Or, take a picture to share on Instagram and tag me @theblackpeppercorn.

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Recipe Rating




33 comments

  • This is a fantastic recipe! It’s rich & not overly tomato-ish. I used it to make bbq chicken pizza.

    • Reply
  • Sir, well done! Now, before I begin describing the modifications I made, please understand I couldn’t have done this without your amazing website and recipes…thank you!

    Like spaghetti sauce, I think bbq sauce is very personal for every person: everyone has their own opinion of what a good sauce is. Therefore, I combined this Guinness sauce with your Habanero sauce and cut the brown sugar down to only 1/2 cup. Plus, I upped the tomato paste to 1-1/2 can to give me just a bit more tangy. I think this is a great balance between sweet and tangy.

    Steve…this is wonderful. I’m going to smoke two racks of ribs this afternoon and sauce one up with this and the other with your Yellow Carolina sauce, which is unmodified and perfect as is! Again, thank you for this wonderful treasure trove of information!

    • Reply
  • I’m smoking smoke corn beef and cabbage as we speak!! My husband ( whose not Irish) said he needed a bbq sauce to go with it… well, I wanted to stick with my Irish heritage as much as possible… I found this recipe and tried it… it’s AWESOME!!! Mine came out a little to thick after I threw it in the blender… I read the reviews and one person had the same problem… I added water and it came out AWESOME!! Thanks!!! This recipe is DEFINITELY a keeper!!!

    • Reply
  • 5 stars
    I made this sauce for my family and they LOVE it. We use a lot of bbq sauce in my household since we bbq all year long and this has become the new favourite. It’s good on everything from steak to fish and believe me we’ve tried it on every meat you can cook on a grill. I let a couple friends try it and now I’m having to make several batches at a time just to have enough to go around! So, thank you, so very much for sharing your amazing recipe with us.

    • Reply
  • One of my husband’s favorite beers. I think your sauce would be a great surprise for him one night. Thank you for sharing. #whatscookingwednesday

    • Reply
  • Wow, my boyfriend would love this! Definitely going to make it in the near future.

    • Reply
  • 5 stars
    I just finished cooking:
    As I am living in Laos, I had to use the BeerLao dark lager (333ml) instead of Guiness.

    Its so delicious and really easy. I followed the complete recepy with Heinz destilled White Vinegar, didn’t use apple cider vinegar as I usally do for my sauces. But that was a good choice for me. It was just a little tiny bit to sweet for my tastebuds, but until now I haven’t tried it with meat.

    Next batch will be quadruppled and I’ll try to add some liquid smoke on half the batch.

    • Reply
  • Does anyone know how much this recipe yields? Thank you!

    • Reply
  • Hi Steve, been a follower of your blog ever since I bought a smoker last year. Love your sauces. I took this recipe as a blueprint, and gave it a New England flavor. I used Smuttynose Brown Dog Ale and replaced the molasses with good ol’ fashioned Vermont Maple Syrup. The brown ale and maple combo work really well together. I may try it again with a porter, keeping the maple.

    • Reply

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