Combine the water, brown sugar, and yeast in the bowl of a stand mixer and let sit for 5-10 minutes.
Add beer, melted butter, salt, and flour and mix on low speed till combined.
Increase speed to medium and continue until the dough is smooth and begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl (about 3-4 minutes).
If the dough appears too wet add a little bit more flour if needed
Remove the dough and place on lightly floured surface and knead into a ball with your hands.
Coat large bowl with oil and add the dough to bowl.
Cover with plastic wrap and place in warm spot till dough doubles in size. (About 1 hour) Inside was too cold for ours to rise today so we had to turn the oven on a few minutes to get is SLIGHTLY heated up then turned it off and let it rise in there.
While waiting for dough to rise make your dip (recipe in the comments)
Bring a large pot of water to a boil and set oven to 425 degrees.
After dough has risen, on a parchment paper lined baking sheet create pretzel dough balls. We used a small ice cream scoop to make sure they were the same size. Place on parchment paper.
When water has reached a rolling boil VERY CAREFULLY AND SLOWLY add the baking soda.
Working in small batches boil the pretzel balls for about 30-45 seconds making sure that you splash the tops with the water.
Remove with a slotted spoon and place on another lined baking sheet with parchment paper.
Once all pretzels are boiled you can either place on baking sheet that is lined with fresh parchment paper or like in our photos we placed in a cast iron pan for baking and left a spot to put our dip.
Either way, once you are ready to place in oven brush the top of each pretzel with the beaten egg and season with sea salt. Bake for 18-20 minutes or until golden brown.