My first (and only) beer soap smelled like beer for a long time to me, but eventually the beer odor did diminish to a degree. I think it's more a case of a sensitive nose than a strong beer. All I used was some very old beer of some generic brand we had left over from our restaurant. It was plain old Coors (I just went and checked in the garage). We don't drink beer and the guy who helped us move missed a six-pack meant for him, so it sat around for a few years before I decided to make soap with it. In fact I still have 5 bottles of it left and guess I could make more beer soap with it for my brothers. Incidentally, I did not use a fragrance in that beer soap and probably will not in the future to test how my brothers' noses pick or don't pick up on the scent. My husband who smoked for decades, said he has virtually no sense of smell anymore, so he's no help when it comes to ID'ing odors.
If you think the technique of how to prepare the beer itself could play a part (I don't know since I only made it once), I'll tell you what I did in case it may matter. I let the bottle of beer go flat over a couple of days, then slowly added the NaOH crystals to the flat beer. I did not boil it down as some people recommend, as I had not read of that process at the time. I did not freeze, just refrigerated it for a couple of days, so the temperature was probably at about 35°- 40°F when I started adding the lye.