Spending Spent Grains

I’ve been doing some research for my impending beer road trip and one of the things I have been looking at is sustainability, carbon footprints, and the such. Pretty much the only waste product of brewing is the spent grains, and even those are usually disposed of responsibly. Most breweries ship their spent grains off to farms for animals to eat or to use as a fertilizer. I found a few articles about a relatively new idea that seems to be gaining some ground that I find extremely cool.

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Running a brewery takes a lot of energy. The wort has to be heated, then cooled. The final product needs to be chilled. Many pieces of heavy machinery such as bottlers, labelers, etc also suck a lot of power. Oh, and I suppose they might want to do a few other things like keep the lights on as well.

A few breweries, such as Magic Hat Brewing in Vermont, are setting up facilities to utilize those spent grains and other waste products on the premises. The idea is to burn all of the waste as fuel for the brewery itself.

Once the grains are used they are taken to a fermenter loaded with bacteria. The bacteria eats through all of the waste and produces methane gas. The methane is then burned to turn a turbine which in turn supplies some of the power for the brewery. An article in Live Science said that there is potential for a brewery to supply up to 60% of their own energy by burning their waste. Granted, it’s not like the spent grain was really being wasted by going to a farm but it saves a lot of diesel by not having a truck come pick it up and drive it back out there.

There are a few other ways to use spent grains but one of my easy favorites is what Court Avenue Brewing here in Des Moines does, make pretzels with them. They bring a few pretzels out with three dips, beer cheese, stone ground mustard, and caramel. The pretzels are delicious, the dips work well with them, it is just….ideal! They’re a bit pricey for a cheapo like me ($6.99), but they’re absolutely worth it.

Many bakeries are making breads and a few other things from the grains. I also found a few reports of people using them to grow mushrooms.

Here are a few recipes you homebrewers can try out with your spent grains. Let me know how they are!

(Source 1, Source 2)