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(Courtesy Lagunitas Brewing
A hundred years from now, beer historians may look back and acknowledge that beer ended up being brewed using practically everything.
And in a world where a pale ale can be brewed using recycled sewer water, a beer brewed using surplus bread seems like an environmentally sound way to get toasted.
Did you know 44% of all bread produced ends up being wasted? We didn’t. But Toast Ale, a UK company is all about spreading that word – and they’re on a mission to turn bread that might be wasted, into beer.
And now Lagunitas Brewing has partnered with Toast Ale to create the exclusive, limited-edition brew using surplus imperfect loaves from their Petaluma, California neighbors at the Alvarado St. Bakery.
Moderately dry hopped with Loral and Citra hops, Lagunitas The Toast of Petaluma is a 5.3% ABV California Common Lager made with Nova, a new lager yeast strain, and brewed using surplus loaves of Alvarado St Sprouted Sourdough. It will be sold exclusively at the Lagunitas Petaluma TapRoom & Beer Sanctuary beginning June 7.
Alvarado St. Bakery took 80 surplus fresh bread loaves that would have otherwise gone to waste and reduced them into crumbs. Lagunitas brewed them into 16 kegs of The Toast of Petaluma.
Malt is a key beer ingredient, but it has a high carbon footprint due to the land and water required to grow barley and the energy used for malting. Using surplus bread in the grain bill has a 79% lower carbon footprint than malted barley and prevents food waste while also reducing demand for malt.
Since 2016, Toast has avoided 61 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, freed up 260,000 square meters of land, saved 100,914 gallons of water, and used more than 3 million slices of surplus bread.
“Together with Toast Ale, we’ve brewed a delicious beer that also demonstrates our commitment to reducing our environmental impact,” says Paige Guzman, Lagunitas’ Chief Marketing Officer. “We take great pride in making positive changes that create a more resilient and sustainable craft brew industry, and we’re on a roll with this new partnership that truly offers a creative approach.”
Lagunitas is also making a difference beyond this partnership.
The brewery sells spent grains and yeast at a significant discount to provide quality nutritional feed to farm animals in its communities. This keeps approximately 12 million pounds of waste out of landfills annually and reduces the demand for crops grown specifically for animal feed.
In addition, Lagunitas only works with sustainable suppliers, recycles more than 100,000 pounds of materials per month, uses renewable energy from solar systems and an anaerobic bio-digester, treats 100% of its wastewater on-site, and maintains an overall focus on reducing waste.
