From Leftover Bread Comes Beer: UK Companies Tackle Food Waste

Toast Brewing began brewing bread with surplus bread from London bakeries in 2016. This month they launched a collaboration with a popular UK sourdough brand to create beer using perhaps half a tonne of surplus Jason’s Sourdough bread to replace some of the malted barley.

The result is a hazy, “juicy,” co-branded India pale ale, 5.5% alcohol “with a full flavour profile and a clear purpose. It boasts aromas of citrus and peach, a balanced bitterness, and a crisp, smooth finish - described as ‘like a great marmalade on Toast,’” as they describe it.

The Toast Brewing Jason’s Sourdough IPA (in 440ml cans) is now in more than 200 Waitrose stores across England.

Toast’s website explains: “We buy excess bakery bread and use it to replace 25% of the malted barley in all of our beers. The enzymes in the malt then get to work changing starches in the bread to simple sugars, ready for yeast to convert them to alcohol and carbon dioxide. Adding hops to give aroma and bitterness, and to help preserve the beer.

“Nowadays us humans produce a lot of bread, using land, water and energy, but about 44% is wasted,” the website continues. “There’s a similar story for all food - food production is the biggest contributor to climate change, but one third of all food is wasted. Since 2016, we’ve saved so many slices of bread that stacked up together, they’d be 5.6 times the height of Mount Everest.”

Launched five years ago, Jason’s Sourdough is baked using traditional methods and simple, high-quality ingredients. They make “proper” sourdough with no added yeast, preservatives, emulsifiers or unnecessary additives.

“This collaboration allows us to give any surplus sourdough a new lease of life, turning it into something delicious,” says Jason Geary, master baker at Jason’s Sourdough. “By combining our expertise in traditional sourdough with Toast’s innovative brewing, we’ve created a beer that celebrates craftsmanship while tackling food waste.”