From beer waste to bread: The Bengaluru entrepreneurs making a difference

Both beer and bread. Even the worst day can be made better by two simple words. They were previously regarded as history’s greatest culinary collaboration, even though they may appear like an odd match now. The practice of bakers and brewers working side by side in the same structure dates back to Ancient Egypt and possibly even earlier. They also shared more than a few sacks of flour when it came to the components.

Elizabeth Yorke, a Bengaluru-based Chef turned Food Researcher, co-founder of the food publication Edible Issues, and champion for sustainability in food systems. She started the organisation ‘Saving Grains’ in 2021, as a way to utilise one of the city’s most thriving F&B sectors – microbreweries – to revive that ancient partnership between baker and brewer. Her initiative takes the spent grain, leftover produce after extracting the beginnings of beer, and turns it into “good flour,” a sustainable product with many possibilities and benefits. The flour is turned into several goodies, including cookies, brownies, bread, and even rotis.  

Yorke is a qualified chef who holds a culinary degree from Manipal and has worked under William Rubel, a bread expert and food historian in California, as well as at the Central Food Technological Research Institute in Mysore. During her time with Rubel in 2016, she learned about the long-standing bond between brewers and bakers.

Where it all started

According to reports, “I spent about 7 years in and out of the kitchen but there was always a curiosity looming about where my food was coming from and where it went,” Elizabeth says, recalling what drove her to start Saving Grains. “I wanted to know everything from waste management and reduction to marketing to social media and how all of that played into my role as a chef in the food system. It sparked a drive in me to go out and intern at different places and then bring the knowledge back and apply it in the kitchen.” 

She decided to get to the source of the problem and find out more about how flour was created in India, and while she was visiting the CFTRI (Central Food Technological Research Institute) in Mysore, she made an unexpected finding. “I realized there’s so much about food that we just don’t know,” she adds, “It was a bit scandalous to learn how the system of wheat flour was perpetuated, Wholewheat, maida, refined flour all of them.” She next travelled to Santa Cruz, California, where she interned with William Rubel, a bread expert and food historian. There, they spent days making bread with a Western concentration from the 13th to the 16th century. She originally learned about the idea of repurposing wasted grain from the brewing process into baking flour here.

A dream come true

Building on her enthusiasm, she enrolled in the Food Innovation Program of the Future Food Institute in Italy as a research student, concentrating on global circular and sustainable food systems as well as sustainable modules. With the help of her skills and experience, she developed Saving Grains, which, based on a community-based paradigm, would become Banglalore’s answer to upcycling used grains.

In December 2021, Saving Grains officially partnered with Geist Brewery Co., a Bangalore microbrewery that, as a zero liquid discharge brewery, was already aligned with a sustainability ethos. Since then they’ve also gone on to enlist microbreweries across the city. 

The spent grain is picked up from the breweries after the first mash, brought back to their facility at the Kutumba Community Centre, dried and milled into flour and then made into rotis and other products. Their work is an extension of the Kutumba Kitchen Project which highlights Elizabeth’s vision to put people and the community at the centre of her circular food economy.

How it works converted to beer

Breweries produce alcohol mostly from barley, although they also employ wheat, rye, and other grains. The grains are first germinated, then cooked, crushed, and extracted before being converted to beer. The “spent grain” that remains after extraction is not all that “spent.” While starch and sugars are extracted, the grain still has plenty of protein, fibre and other nutrients that are good for consumption. This is why much of it is used for animal feed, but a lot of it is also junk. Even a cursory glance at the numbers is eye-popping.

There are over 70 microbreweries in Bengaluru alone. They are thought to produce 12,000 kg of discarded grain each day when combined. When you multiply those figures by 12, the results are simply astonishing. The numbers are even more shocking when extrapolated to the full nation, which is thought to contain between 250 and 300 microbreweries.

The mash is collected from the brewery and brought to Kutumba, a community centre that Saving Grains collaborates with, where it is dried and milled into flour. Not one to be daunted by numbers, Yorke started modestly and scaled up to processing about 1,200 kg last year into ‘good flour,’ which has 45% dietary fibre and 22% protein, while the carb content remains low. 

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