Homebrew: Reuse Spent Grains

I brew my own beer for a hobby. It’s a lot of fun and I learn a lot in the process. One thing that I noticed early on though was that I had a lot of spent grains from the wort making process. After some research I thought about adding them into my compost bins in my back yard. This has actually worked out relatively well so far. It cuts down on the waste I generate and I get to use the grains again around my yard. Completely win – win for me. So the other day I was reading some magazines that I had fallen behind on and one was Zymurgy from American Homebrewers Association  there was an article on what you can do with the spent grains. I was very excited to see this as its good to know I am not the only one with this concern. Plus I get to see what other ideas they had for them. I know at some of the brewery tours I have been on that they often times will give away their spent grains to farms for feed and other uses. So I knew that people in the business were at least trying to do something about the amount of waste generated in brewing beer.

The article was good and had 4 suggestions of things you can do with the grains. Unfortunately as it is a subscription based magazine I can’t give you a link to it but at the Beerista Blog they went through a few of the recommendations. The first idea they had was to compost the grains. No help for me there as I had been doing this for about 6 years, but hopefully it will get other homebrewers to try this out at home. Even better if they don’t compost yet and they start doing it instead of bagging yard waste up for their municipality to pick up. The next two suggestions were for recipes. One was a pizza which sounds interesting and I may try out after my next batch of beer, which should be soon so maybe I will revisit this topic in early September. The next recipe was for a cinnabun which also sounds like it will be worth a shot making. I think when I brew beer next I will do the pizza first and if that comes out OK I will try the cinnabun recipe on the next batch. The last suggestion they had was also a recipe but for dog treats. Given my dog will eat anything I will definitely try this as well next time. Plus I like the idea of being able to make my own dog treats which I hate to say I have never tried to do. I thought they had some good ideas of what to make from the grains and they also gave you a ratio of 25% spent grains to flour ratio for any recipe you may want to try. It will be fun to try out a few new things with the grains during my next brews.