In a large saute or frying pan melt 2 tablespoons of butter. Add the bacon until crisp and remove from pan to drain.

Add the onions and sugar and saute on low to medium heat until they turn caramel brown. About 30 minutes. Depending on your heat you may choose to add an additional tablespoon of butter to the onions. Just before removing the onions from the pan add the garlic for a few minutes. Set aside the onions and wipe the pan clean.

Combine the flour, salt and pepper on a plate a dredge the beef pieces in the flour until completely covered. Be sure to shake off any access flour.

In teh frying pan add the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter along with the olive oil. Cook all sides of the beef over medium heat until done. This should take about 8-10 minutes and may have to be done in batches. Remove the beef but leave all of the drippings in the pan.

Pour the beer into the pan deglazing it completely. Scrape as much of the glaze off the bottom as possible. Bring this to a boil and remove from the heat.

Now here comes the tricky part. Deciding how to finish the stew. You have 2 options. The first is transferring all of the above into a dutch oven and cooking on the stovetop on low for about 2 hours.

The second option (which I use) is to transfer everything to my crockpot. In the crockpot you can cook it on high for about 3 hours or low for about 6 hours. Whichever options you choose after you mix everything together add the carrots for the final ingredient.