beer cheese soup

seriously does anything sound better than this?  I like beer.  I like cheese.  I like soup.  I like them all together.  The other evening I decided to make this delicious recipe from Allrecipes.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Wisconsin-Natives-Beer-Cheese-Soup/Detail.aspx

As written:
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups diced carrots
1 1/2 cups diced onion
1 1/2 cups diced celery
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce
1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
3 cups chicken broth
2 cups beer (Boulevard Wheat)
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup flour
4 cups milk or half and half
6 cups shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon dry mustard --didn't have so I just used extra Dijon mustard
Directions
In a large saucepan over medium heat, stir together carrots, onion, celery, and garlic. Stir in hot pepper sauce, cayenne pepper, salt, and pepper. Pour in chicken broth and beer; simmer until vegetables are tender, about 12 minutes. Remove from heat.
Meanwhile, heat butter in a large soup pot over medium-high heat. Stir in flour with a wire whisk; cook, stirring until the flour is light brown, about 3 or 4 minutes. Gradually stir in milk, whisking to prevent scorching, until thickened. Remove from heat, and gradually stir in cheese. Keep warm.
Stir beer mixture into cheese mixture. Stir in Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce, and dry mustard. Adjust for hot pepper sauce. Bring to a simmer, and cook 10 minutes. Serve topped with popcorn.
Changes made:
I don't really measure spices very well, I know what we like and I tend to add more of those things.  In this case I added more Cayenne, more hot pepper sauce (franks hot sauce), and more garlic. 
I also cooked the veggies for more like 30 min so I was sure they were soft, the carrots took forever.
I did add a little more flour to the soup toward the end, Spence thought it was a little thinner than he wanted it.
I decided to just cook the veggies in the butter for the first part of the mixture, no particular reason it just seemed better, and two different mixtures, a "beer mixture" and a "cheese mixture" seemed like an added step that I didn't need so I omitted that. I cooked  the vegetables in the butter for about 30 minutes, added the flour (dissolved in some of the chicken broth because otherwise I end up with lumps that never go away), then cooked that another couple of minutes. Stirred the milk in gradually, added the beer, chicken broth, mustard and Worcestershire sauce, brought it to a boil and simmered for about 15 minutes, stirring fairly constantly, until creamy and thickened. I turned off the heat, then stirred in the cheese a little at a time until combined.
I planned to also add a little bacon on top of the cheese but turns out that didn't work out so well.  Not because I don't think bacon would be good in this, it would.  But the bacon I had in the fridge was just a little off in color, so I didn't want to risk it. I bought a loaf of Italian bread served that on the side.  Next time I make it, I'm totally adding in a little bit of bacon though.  And I may shred the carrots instead of dicing them, they didn't get to quite the consistency I wanted.