Scottish Haggis Flavour Walkers Crisps and Scottish Ale [By Spectre]

Just wanted to start this post with a big thank you to Dreich who very kindly sent the Haggis crisps over to us and made this possible. Thank you for sending them and for your continued support, it is really appreciated :-)

Beer and crisps is one of my favourite snacks during a film. So whilst watching the rather long winded, over in-depth and faintly boring Watchmen, I cracked open a few beers to numb the pain and a bag of Haggis flavoured crisps. I’m sure Haggis is a food that has brought dread to many a table in the past. It could be just the concept of mixing ingredients such as; a lamb’s heart and lungs, beef or lamb trimmings, fat and lean, onions, oatmeal, coriander, mace, nutmeg and stock from the lungs and trimmings, all wrapped in a sheep's stomach or ox cecum, that could make the sturdiest of eaters heave. However, I like Black Pudding, and the concept of that is pretty grim. Besides, these are only crisps, so I put the bucket away before opening, but positioned myself nearby Cinabar’s kitchen sink just in case. The crisps have a herby chicken smell about them, that doesn’t seem to marry up with the afore mentioned ingredients. They have the same kind of taste, and I’ve been assured they don’t taste of Haggis. I couldn’t tell whether to be disappointed about that or not, but was slightly distracted by Cinabar’s eyes burning into me when I dropped the crisps in favour of watching Silk Spectre get her jollies out for a particularly energetic scene. The crisps are reminiscent of an old sausage flavour that Walkers brought out a few years back and then discontinued. I’ve been told Haggis doesn’t taste bad, rather like a spicy / herby sausage flavour. Just these crisps don’t taste like Haggis, or the German Bratwurst flavour, or like Black Pudding for that matter.
The beer I chose to gulp down with these inauthentic flavoured crisps was a Scottish Ale. Not just any Scottish Ale either, so I’ve been assured, but THE Scottish Ale. This beer is brewed with thistle for some crazy reason. If that’s not enough, the mad Scottish brewers have mixed in ginger and chocolate! The beer has a sweet smell about it, which explains the chocolate. I’ve never eaten a thistle, and suspect not many people have, but there is a plant type taste to start with when drinking this beer. The plant taste is then replaced by the ginger and chocolate, which stays in the mouth for a long drawn out aftertaste. This doesn’t help when you’re eating meaty crisps at the same time. The savoury really does bring out the ginger and chocolate in this strong beer. This should be considered as more of a pudding beer, whereas I was simply eating the wrong thing with it. It is suggested that this beer should be served best with an apple pie (and custard?), which doesn’t sound typically Scottish. I was happy to finish off the crisps in favour of this sweet and healthy tasting beer. Then I remember saying at one point, “is this movie actually going anywhere?” this was just before the bad guy was finally revealed and something actually happened. Sadly it didn’t involve Silk Spectre’s jollies.

By Spectre