I have four words for you: Beer flavored potato chips.
Inventor Brett Stern can hear the cries echoing through stadiums and arenas across the land: "Get yer ice-cold beer!" And, more germane to his current project, "Get yer fresh Beer Chips here!"Beer Chips are his invention, and you can try your first packet today at the 19th annual Oregon Brewers Festival, which runs through Sunday at Tom McCall Waterfront Park. It'll attract as many as 80,000 beer fans, making it the perfect place to introduce Beer Chips, which are thick, kettle-style potato chips that are sweet, salty and subtly flavored with real beer -- with the alcohol removed, so they're legal for all ages.
(If that sounds like an unlikely taste sensation, you should've been at the story meeting this week where I passed around one of the prototype bags of chips. The legend is that journalists love food, and the freer, the better. But that doesn't explain the feeding frenzy that erupted and soon had me scuttling back to my desk for another bag to share. "Be sure and save some for the photo!" one of the graphic designers yelled.)
When he realized that no one had thought to make a potato chip flavored with beer, he checked the name Beer Chips and the domain www.beerchips.com. He found both were available, a situation he soon changed. "I thought, 'Great! Now I'm in business! And I'm not sure what a Beer Chip is yet.' "