In Wisconsin Taste Test, two Milwaukee Record folks share their thoughts on two new-to-them “Wisconsin-y” food or drink items. Think raw beef sandwiches, Old-Fashioneds, and those giant bags of generic candy they sell at Fleet Farm. This week: various Miller-branded snacks!
Pringles Miller Lite Beer-Braised Steak Potato Crisps
Tyler Maas: Brand collaborations seem to be all the rage these days. This has become especially common in the realm of food, where two things that don’t really have anything to do with each other temporarily join forces to create something intriguing, if nothing else. It’s kind of like that time Steve Urkel was on an episode of Full House, except you can eat it. With aspirations to appeal to consumer curiosity of late, Taco Bell and Cheez-It briefly partnered up. So did Pepsi and Peeps, Oreo and Selena Gomez, and countless other unconventional corporate pairings.
A recent instance of this with loose local ties is Pringles calling upon Miller Lite to collaborate on a series of three grill-centric potato chip flavors. Though they’re said to be widely available at grocery chains, I struck out in my attempts to find them in the wild. Eventually, I ordered all three flavors from Walmart’s website. The first one I tried was Beer-Braised Steak. Admittedly, I’d never encountered a beer-braised steak in real life, so I didn’t have much to go on from apart from knowing what both beer and steak taste like separately. Still, I feel these sort of missed the mark. The flavor was lacking, apart from a very slight mushroom-y tinge (maybe a near-miss attempt to replicate beef?) and no residual beer flavor.
Matt Wild: David Letterman used to do a segment called “Is This Anything?” Someone would come out and do something vaguely interesting—juggling while wearing a funny hat or whatever—and Letterman would decide whether or not it was, well, anything. More often than not, it wasn’t.
And that’s how I felt after crunching into a few of these Beer-Braised Steak Pringles. They’re not really anything! To my tastebuds, they’re just Pringles! To paraphrase another ancient reference: Where’s the steak? Where’s the beer? But whatever, I love Pringles, and I would still gladly destroy an entire sleeve of these things in 20 minutes.
Tyler rating: A very light “Yeah, sure.” (Okay.)
Matt rating: A very light “Yeah, sure.” (Okay.)
Pringles Miller Lite Beer Can Chicken Potato Crisps
Tyler: Compared to the Miller Lite Beer Can Chicken flavor of Pringles, the Beer-Braised Steak chips seemed to offer a veritable symphony of tastes. These chicken varietals had pretty much no flavor to speak of, except an extremely muted note of artificial poultry. More broth-like than chicken-infused though. It’s almost as if somebody at the Pringles factory lightly touched a Chicken In A Biskit cracker to the bottom of each chip for a fraction of a second. If you like Original Pringles, but your preferred grocer is sold out of them, these are essentially the same thing. Besides that super specific situation or, like, buying these to add a potato chip crunch to a sandwich, you’re probably okay just saving $2-$4 and skipping these altogether.
Matt: David Letterman used to do a segment called…oh, wait, I already said that. Well, it’s kind of the same deal with these Beer Can Chicken Pringles. They’re just Pringles! I suppose I could detect a slight hint of chicken, but not much. I call your “touched by a Chicken In A Biskit” assessment, Tyler, (Touched By A Chicken In A Biskit! This fall on CBS!) and raise you “dusted with a pinch of chicken salt you get in a pack of ramen.”
Tyler rating: “Yeah, no, but yeah, sure.” (Not good, but I’ll eat them anyway.)
Matt rating: “Yeah, sure.” (Okay.)
Pringles Miller Lite Grilled Beer Brat Potato Crisps
Tyler: Okay, now this is what I was looking for with this collaboration! The food scientists over at Pringles somehow managed to Frankenstein a legitimately accurate potato chip rendition of a grilled beer brat. The seasoning was far more pronounced on these than the other two flavors, including a beer-forward taste for once. I also detected hints of onion powder and an underlying grilled sausage flavor. How did they do it? This one alone makes the entire collaboration between Miller and the tennis ball tube potato chip purveyors worthwhile. In fact, my working theory is Pringles and Miller started with this one, but someone in management voiced concerns about bratwursts (and especially “beer brats”) being extremely regional, forcing them to hastily tack on the more universal steak and chicken flavors to hedge their bets. Regardless of how it actually went down, the Miller Lite Beer Brat chips rule.
Matt: Yep, this is finally something! Robust, yummy, and favor-accurate in a kind-of-unnerving Jelly Belly way. You can actually see the powder for once:
If you want these chips to be even more beer-brat accurate, pour a couple two-tree tubes into a slow cooker and set it all out in the back of a bar. (Don’t turn the slow cooker on or anything. It’s just for show!)
Tyler rating: An emphatic “Oh, yah!” (Very good.)
Matt rating: An emphatic “Oh, yah!” (Very good.)
Planters and Miller High Life Bar Nut Mix
Tyler: Not to be outdone in the beer-branded snack sector, the peanut magnates at Planters hitched their name to Miller High Life’s wagon for a new so-called “Bar Nut Mix” that’s available (for a limited time!) nationwide and for online purchase from Amazon. Of course, this mix is packed with seasoned Planters peanuts and almonds aplenty. The 5.5-ounce bags also features a crunchy supporting cast of “Cajun-style corn sticks, pretzel sticks, rice crackers, and garlic breadsticks.”
Matt: I’m a High Life guy. Other than the occasional Riverwest Stein, High Life is the only beer I drink. It’s light and refreshing, it’s crisp and clean, and it actually tastes like something. [side-eyes Busch Light] I’m also a snack mix guy. Put a bag of snack mix in front of me and I’ll go to town on that thing like nobody’s business. Breadsticks? Yes. Pretzels? Yes. Those double-roasted rye chips? Hell yes. So am I giving this bag of High Life-branded bar nut mix an enthusiastic “Oh, yah!” even though the pieces are kind of small and the High Life is indeed only a branding thing? Oh, yah!
Tyler: It’s hard to go wrong with an assortment of crunchy, savory, and pepper-flecked ingredients. However, I should mention both the chosen ingredients themselves and the sheer tininess of the pretzels makes me wonder if Hormel Foods (Planters’ parent company) just tossed otherwise unsellable pretzel nubs and excess components of unpopular snack components in a bag with their world-class legumes and drupes. Oh, and there’s not actually High Life in the mix. Upon further inspection, the tie-in comes from the suggestion to enjoy the Bar Nut Mix with a cold High Life. All that being said, it’s still solid…especially when you take the manufacturer’s suggestion and follow bites of the mix with swigs of “The Champagne Of Beers.” No, this isn’t a Gardetto’s-tier snack mix, but what the hell is?!
Tyler rating: “Yeah, sure.” (Okay) on its own. A soft “Oh, yah.” with no exclamation point (Pretty Good) if enjoyed with a bottle of High Life.
Matt rating: An enthusiastic “Oh, yah!” (Very good.)
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