The Cereal Upcyclers 🔁🌾

Long description

An average microbrewery uses 200kg of grain to brew 1,000 litres of beer. This grain is lightly milled and then mixed with hot water in the “mashing” stage. The liquid is then separated from the grain and moves on to becoming delicious beer while the grain which is “spent” of most of the sugars and starch that have dissolved into the water (thus spent grain) is disposed off.   Responsible breweries in a city like Bangalore give this spent grain to livestock farmers where it is used as animal feed. But in many other cases the grain is left for the municipality to dispose.

In 2019, there were approximately 200 microbreweries in India and 67 in Bangalore alone. That means an average of 12,000 kgs of high fibre (46%) and protein (23%) grain being discarded everyday that could be used to make delicious & nutritious products.

But this is not just about the products alone. It’s about people and the community. Models for circular food systems largely are built around material resources (like, spent grain).

At Saving Grains we’re imagining and building a people centred circular food systems model relying on traditional knowledge systems using upcycling food as a tool to nurture and nourish community – starting with a few spent grains.

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