THE GIST
Regrained, a new company based out of San Fransisco, are launching a range of granola bars made using brewers’ spent grain. According to its website, the company will be ‘upcycling’ the spent grains from local breweries including Magnolia, 21st Amendment and Triple Voodoo.
WHY IT MATTERS
If you’ve ever timed your visit to a brewery taproom just right then you might be lucky enough to have seen a farmer collecting spent grain to use as livestock feed. This is a pretty common relationship throughout the brewing industry and helps brewers save thousands of dollars on costly disposal fees.
However, with the amount of US breweries now tipping 4500, many of which are completing large expansion projects, the amount of grain being used by the industry in increasing exponentially. This means a lot more wastage and that the brewing industry and those that surround it will need to devise solutions to deal with it.
Many breweries exist in tightly packed, urban areas and not all of them will have a local farmer to call on. Regrained could well be a small part of a new movement, as the industry continues to solve new issues such as increased wastage. And as a beer fan, a spent grain granola bar sounds like something I’d eat.
— Matthew Curtis