Beer cheese potato soup-- 3 recipe fusion

I like potato soup, and I also like to improvise with my recipes. I think some of that comes from living in Japan, where you can't always get the ingredients for your favorite dishes so you end up improvising a fix.

Anyway, I made a killer pot of soup last night, so I'll share the recipe. This started out as a simple potato soup but evolved into kind of a beer/cheese variety. It's a fusion of 3 different recipes plus my own ideas.

If you like celery, put it in. Personally, though, I think celery is a nasty little plant, which has been forever banished from my dishes.

Jessica's Killer Beer Cheese Potato Soup
1 T butter (a block roughly 2-3 cm square, or an inch by inch or so)
1 m onion, chopped (I used hot red onions)
4-6 potatoes
water, depending on soup needed.
3 chicken boullion cubes
Parsley, thyme, bay leaves, rosemary, salt, pepper, garlic powder to taste
*If you hate any of these things, then don't use them. Choose your own.
2 cups or so shredded cheddar cheese (two or three handfuls--really sharp cheese gives you good taste)
1 cup beer or so (1/3 to 1/2 a tin)
1 cup flour or so (1/2 a coffee mug full)
milk, to taste-- a good way to use up milk which is reaching its jump ship date.

Cube potatoes-- peel or not, your choice, and put in pot. Add the onion, butter, water, 1 chicken boullion cube, and some spices. Cook until potatoes are done.

In a separate dish, put the flour and beer in and mix. A wisk works best, or a fork. You're doing flour because it helps thicken the soup, and it also helps balance a bit. If you put it right in the pot, you get clumps. So mix it with the beer, then add, and you'll avoid this problem.

The chicken boullion helps add flavor, as potatoes aren't the most flavorful vegetable out there. I haven't tried with vegetable boullion, but I suppose you could get a nice flavor too.

When the potatoes are cooked, do the following:
-add the beer and flour mixture and stir.
-Prepare 2 more chicken boullion cubes and hot water. Just use a bit of hot water. If you put the cubes in a bowl, put enough hot water to cover the top. Add this in and mix. You want a strong flavor, not a weak one, so plan accordingly.
-Put the cheese in and mix.
-Put the milk last and mix.

Beer types change the soup taste, as you can imagine. Stout beer like Guinness... I probably wouldn't use. An amber or a lager would be good. Nothing really pale though. I wouldn't use a hefeweizen, unless you want citrus soup. This last time, I had a tin of Victoria Bitter (which is not bitter at all), and it was good. I almost chose San Miguel, but realized VB is a smidgen darker. I'll try SM next time. I had a bottle of Kingfisher, but I wouldn't use it for soup. Too light.

And that's it! You can eat this with Red Lobster cheddar biscuits, garlic bread, crackers, plain old toast, croutons... however.