The Perfect Beer And Potato Chip Pairings, Chosen By An Expert

Beer expert and writer Michael Donaldson chooses the ideal beers to pair with your favourite potato chips, because what’s better than a frosty pint and salty crisps?

Chips and beer, a combination that’s as old as beer itself ... give or take a few thousand years.

You will know the scene in the pub – a packet of chips split down three sides to open up as a platter in the middle of the table. Once it would have been salt and vinegar and a jug of Speight’s or Tui.

But modern chip flavours are going the way of modern craft beer – with myriad flavours and textures.

Usually, putting the two of them together involves nothing more than grabbing whatever is in the fridge and getting on with it, but let’s do it in the 21st-century way: mindfully.

Generally, the secret to matching beer and food is using contrasting but complementary flavours. I can tell you, for example, that putting a chocolate-accented beer with a chocolate dessert does no favours to either. On paper, you think it should work, but in practice the sweet notes cancel each other out and the beer just tastes bitter, without any nuance.

Same with smoked food and smoked beer.

So, with that in mind, let’s rip(ple) into it.

The chips: Bluebird Originals Chicken

Bluebird Originals has been around for 70 years, famous for its thin yet robust, crinkle-cut chips and traditional flavours, often seen at school events or Kiwi barbecues. The chicken chips have a distinct layer of chicken-y flavour (let’s call it what it is: chicken salt) with onion powder, chicken powder, parsley, rosemary extract and more.

The beer: Urbananut Miami Lager

Not just any lager this one. It’s a zesty crafty that brings both more (and less) to the table compared with your run-of-the-mill green-bottled lager.

First, it’s a low-carb lager, meaning it’s super-light in the body, but it’s got an upbeat modern flavour, with a zesty lemon-and-lime character to the hops that makes the beer pop.

Those citrus notes work beautifully with the simple chicken-salt flavour of these chips and the lightness of the lager allows the chip flavour to shine. Chicken and citrus are flavours that travel hand in hand and this is a great example.

Ready Salted with Pilsner

The chip: SnackaChangi Salted

The beer: Parrotdog Sundog Pilsner

While a lager worked well with the Bluebird Original, these thicker-cut chips need a beer with something extra.

Parrotdog’s Sundog Pilsner is a New Zealand-hopped pilsner, meaning it’s fruity, slightly sweet, but still crisp and clean. It does an excellent job in the flavour wrestle with these chips, bringing fresh passionfruit and white grapes to the flavour department. It’s vibrant, bright and bursting with hop aroma. The flavour remains hoppy-sweet, but buttons off to a snappy finish.

This is a more-more combo.

Barbecue Chips with Sour Pickle Beer

The Chips: Copper Kettle Wood Fired BBQ

These are dialled to perfection with a smoky sweetness reminiscent of barbecue sauce, a good crunch and a lingering flavour.

The beer: Garage Project Pickle Beer

For the uninitiated, it does just what it says on the tin.

It’s a lightly sour beer brewed with cucumbers and dill pickle spices, including dill, mustard seeds and habanero chilli. The aroma is unmistakably the same as you get when you open a pickle jar.

Pickle Beer works by cutting against the sweet smokiness of the chips, cleaning up the richness and cleansing your palate for another crunch. But also … pickles with barbecue food? What’s not to love about that match.

Rosemary & Thyme Chips with Porter

The chip: Proper Crisps Rosemary & Thyme

Super-herby chips that had me in mind of a roast dinner as soon as I opened them.

The beer: Emerson’s London Porter

These fragrant herbal flavours need a rich beer and we’ve got a match that could be the perfect aperitif to a Sunday roast.

Imagine the way the sweet, pungent rosemary and earthy thyme suit those meaty, charred flavours – we want to find a beer with the same rich, umami quality.

Porter is one of the oldest beer styles in the world and has all the elements you need for these crisps: there’s chocolate malt sweetness, hedgerow hop character, creamy texture, excellent palate weight (surprisingly light) and a drying roast coffee bitterness.

Sour Cream and Chives Chips with Bright IPA

The Chips: Heartland Sour Cream & Chives Wave Cut

Definitive sour cream flavour with a sprinkle of chives. These chips are thick and crunchy and have a deep richness to them.

The beer: Mount Brewing Supernova Bright IPA

Before we get into this beautiful match, first an explanation for bright IPA.

If you’ve been paying attention, for the best part of the last decade beer sales have been dominated by hazies – think creamy, lush, tropical fruit and sweet citrus flavours.

Bright IPA uses that same kind of modern hop profile – juicy-fruity with a low bitterness – but does it in a crystal-clear beer. Mount Brewing’s Supernova is light and refreshing, but bursting with blueberry and white grapes.

These crisps need something zippy enough to cut through the rich flavours and bold enough to stand up to the big sour cream flavour.

This was an almost-perfect match, with the hops pinging off the herb notes in the chips and the textures working together.

Prawn Cocktail Chips with Hazy IPA

The chip: Delisio Prawn Cocktail

First-time caller here … what a chip! Fantastic flavour that captures the essence of the Marie Rose sauce that makes prawn cocktail such a popular and enduring classic.

The beer: Bach Brewing Bungy Smuggler Hazy IPA

Prawn cocktail is a big flavour wall to go up against – the tomato sauce note in particular – and what’s needed is a beer that’s got some heft, but also a little bit of delicacy to go with these beauties.

Bach Brewing Bungy Smuggler is a gorgeously rich New Zealand-hopped hazy IPA.

It delivers solid waves of sweet orange, grapefruit, hints of cannabis and a pinch of woody spice. Complex, nuanced and multi-faceted, it dances a nice tango with these chips, with some give-and-take in the steps.

Lime & Salt Chips with Chilli Pils

The chips: Heartland Lime & Salt Thin Cut

These are thin cut with a light, airy texture, but the flavour is dialled up nicely and the lime notes are zesty and bold.

The beer: McLeod’s Chilli Pils

Perhaps my pick of the matches – a brilliant exercise in contrast and complement. Chili and lime? It’s worked in Mexico for centuries and it works here brilliantly.

These zippy lime chips need a flavour partner with equal ping (hence the chilli), but also lighter-bodied beer to go with the thin-cut chips (hence the pilsner).

McLeod’s is based in Waipu and its Chilli Pils is made with chillies from fellow Northlander Kaitaia Fire. The beer has a lovely, perfumed-chilli heat that’s delicate yet intense.

I thought these two flavours worked in such harmony, they’re almost certain to become a summer go-to.

Chilli Chips with Red IPA

The chips: Proper Crisps Chilli

Zingers! So much great chilli flavour, tangy, spicy and lively with two types of chilli – Sichuan flakes and a dusting of chilli powder.

The beer: Hop Federation Red IPA

With these spicy chips we need something to calm down the intense flavour.

Hop Federation, of Nelson, is renowned for its red IPA – think of a traditional, hoppy IPA, but made with sweeter, darker malts that deliver a layer of caramel and toffee malts.

These richer malt characters gently give way to a pine-and-grapefruit hop character.

What we get with this match is the initial burn of the chilli chips that is soothed by the lush sweetness of the beer, but then the hops edge in and take your palate back towards the chips, with the heat rising again against the gentle backdrop of bitterness.

An excellent ebb-and-flow combo.

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