With a new microbrewery popping up in the world every three minutes—don’t check our stats, we’re right—finding new ways to innovate among a crowded pack of craft producers is an increasingly tall task. But the brewers at Seven Bro7hers in Salford, England have arrived at a solution for separating their suds from the rest: using bad cereal.
Last year, the brewery teamed up with BrewDog in Manchester to whip up a milkshake IPA called “Cornshake,” which naturally used leftover Kellogg’s Corn Flakes in the mash. Truth be told, Seven Bro7hers owner and founder Keith McAvoy didn’t think the brew was long for this world, due to litigation concerns.
“A few days after we launched the beer,” McAvoy says, “Kellogg’s got in touch, and as we had used Kellogg’s branding on the label, we thought we were in trouble, and they were going to ask us to remove the reference. But it was quite the opposite: They loved what we had done.”
Not only had McAvoy gotten the go-ahead from the cereal king to continue using the Kellogg’s name, but in fact, the company wanted to collaborate on a new beer. As you might expect, a mass producer like Kellogg’s lets a lot of food go to waste during the quality assurance process: Some flakes are too big. Some are overcooked. Some colors are wrong. Instead of going in the box, that leftover cereal goes in the trash.
Kellogg’s wanted it to go somewhere else.
So McAvoy and co. began creating Throw Away IPA—a hoppy IPA created with those rejected corn flakes—and as discussions continued, he says, “it became apparent that the wider issue of food waste could be addressed, and we decided to officially continue the partnership and make two more beers.”
Those are Cast Off Pale Ale, a double dry-hopped pale ale made from recycled Rice Krispies, and Sling It Out Stout, a cocoa stout that uses surplus Coco Pops (a.k.a. Cocoa Krispies in the U.S.), both of which launched in the U.K. this week. Seven Bro7hers is selling all three beers in a limited-edition variety pack; they aren’t available in America yet, but we can only hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment