Brewer’s spent grains
Brewer’s spent grains, or “beer spent grains,” are a by-product of beer making. They represent all the solid residues that remain after the extraction of sugar and starch from the cereals used during the brewing process.
They are mainly made up of cereal residues, often barley, which have been malted before brewing. After the maceration and filtration phase of the beer, these spent grains are recovered and, in their raw form, still contain a good part of the nutrients present in cereals, including fibre, proteins and carbohydrates.
Brewer’s spent grains have multiple uses. One of the main uses of brewer’s spent grains is their use as livestock feed. They are also used as compost or natural fertilizer.
Brewer’s spent grains can also be used to produce energy. They can be transformed into biogas via anaerobic digestion or used as solid fuel to produce thermal energy.
For the manufacture of our food, we find more and more proposals based on brewer’s grains. Dried spent grains can be used as flour in products such as bread, pasta, biscuits and energy bars.
For example, the company Maltivor offers various spent grain-based products that can partially replace wheat flour by 10 to 30% in ready-to-use formulations and mixtures for applications such as pastry. Other companies of varying sizes also offer spent grain flours (Markal, Les Drécheurs Urbains, Happy Drèches, Nextgrain,…).
Other companies use these spent grains to make products such as biscuits. This is the case of IPSAGO. And other applications exist for bread-making, pizzas and other flammenkuche. A South African Company, Beer Crisps proposes snacks from Brewer’s spent grains.
Finally, some companies are embarking on the valorization of these spent grains by fermentation to obtain ingredients of interest to the agri-food industry. This is the case of Green Spot Technologies, which offers chocolate substitutes from fermented spent grains.
One of the main advantages of brewer’s spent grains is their potential to reduce waste and promote food recycling.
Science 2 Food is in contact with some of these companies.
