From mouldy cheese to black fungus, many edible delicacies have fully embraced life past the use-by date. But what about beer made from inedibly old bread? Better still, beer made from old bread in a specific effort to limit food waste?
Welcome to Toast Ale, a particularly unique type of beer made from loaves of old bread. After a successful launch in the UK last year, anti-food waste advocate Tristram Stuart has now launched the brand in America. Stuart appropriately paired the launch with a screening of a documentary, Wasted! The Story of Food Waste, at the Tribeca Film Festival. The beer was made from 250 pounds (113.4kg) of unused sliced bread from Aladdin Bakers in Brooklyn, and the company are now apparently overwhelmed by offers from other bakeries hoping to send in their unused loaves.
Toast Ale aims to open a brewery by July 4, in order to convert more than 100 tonnes of bread into beer over the next three years, during which it’ll be sold at Whole Foods, as well as bars and restaurants throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. They’ve opened a crowdfunding page to help reach their goal of $35,000US ($46,756AUD).
The whole project is aimed at reducing food waste; according to the Indiegogo crowdfunding page, “over 1/3 of fresh bread in the U.S. goes straight from oven to landfill”. While the company is yet to turn a profit, they’ve also pledged to donate all profits to Feedback, a charity aimed at preventing food waste. Has there ever been a better reason to down a cold one?
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