Couple of minor errors I saw with your code dude.
1. You're not specifying a target in your Status Window you'll get a "gives no such nick/channel" error.
2. I'm sure you meant $1 and not $2.
On *:TEXT:*:*: {
tokenize 33 $1
if ($1 == beer) {
describe $iif($target !ischan,$nick,$chan) gives a nice cold $1 to $nick
}
}
When $1 is tokenized it is beer and not !beer.

And the $iif() function determines where the message is coming from whether it's Private Message or Channel.
-Andy