Burt's Guinness Rich Beef Chilli

History Graduate taste tester went to Dublin for 2 days as you do when you are young and full of energy. And he brought us back a packet of Guinness crisps.

Although [spoiler alert] these crisps are in fact made in Devon by Burt's. Of course they are. Cooked by Richard 2 and grown in a field called Roseworthy. You know, speaking as one of the nerdiest crisp writers around, I feel sure I have eaten crisps grown in that field before. Well, perhaps not. I can only lay my hands on a crisp (potato) grown in a field called Roundwood. Give me time....

Anyway, these richly coloured crisps have an attractive hand cooked look to them and a rich meaty chilli casserole flavour. Although the reluctant taste testers rather liked this crisp we couldn't quite put our collective finger on exactly what they taste of. But it is tasty. And while hot, not too hot.

Nice. But could anyone detect a taste of Guinness? Not sure that we could. Not really.

But maybe if you made a nice beef stew and chucked in half a bottle of Guinness instead of stock or red wine, maybe you wouldn't expect to taste the stout particularly. You'd be looking for a rich taste and I'm guessing that's what you'd get.

Very Guinnessy packaging.

Burt's Thick Cut Guinness

Burt's Thick Cut Potato Chips Hand Cooked with Care in Guinness flavour (Guinness ESTD 1759). What a long name for a packet of crisps.

And these are quite large crisps with quite a large crunch. The photograph doesn't really show how much darker they are than your average crisp (Guinness is dark of course), and the photo on the package is so moodily lit you don't get the dark colour of the crisps from that either.

Quite large, quite crunchy, quite a lot of flavour dust... but the flavour? Guinness? Really?

I'm not a beer drinker. I learned to drink VB (Victoria Bitter) in a Sydney heatwave  - there was a building site and it was hot - but the VB website wants me to enter my DOB before I can see any more than the front page so I'm not going to bother with that.... And I've not tried Guinness at all because for all its fabulous advertising it looks as though it isn't for me.

However, why not try a Guinness flavour crisp?

Well, I took them to work and set out a bowlful in the kitchen for the reluctant taste testers to try.

No-one guessed what they were eating. Suggestions included brioche, dirty potatoes, meaty... kangaroo or antelope?, and (somewhat facetiously I thought) cauliflower and bamboo shoot with a hint of beef.

I thought these crisps tasted of rather yeasty bread. Having interrogated friends who do drink/have drunk Guinness I'm not convinced these crisps taste anything like Guinness.  But it was worth a try. And you may well think I'm wrong.

Grown in a field called Roundwood; cooked by Roddy; all natural flavours, gluten free, no artificial colours, no MSG, no hydrogenated fats; a Facebook page and (apparently) a Twitter account (I haven't looked), these crisps have much to recommend them. Plus we get the LEAF Marque -Burt's potatoes are grown by farmers committed to improving the environment, and there's www.lovetheflavour to visit too. Which is all good.

But as I said, I'm not a sure a taste of Guinness is included.