They use organic beer waste to make hamburgers and want to revolutionize the market.
Thanks to years of teamwork, they have created a beer bagasse-based product that is available in all craft breweries. We’ll tell you how they did it.
Looking for a general solution to the major waste problem in the brewing industry, an SME in Argentina decided to focus on producing a “special” bread that is sold alongside hamburgers in 38 establishments across the country.
The company is called Temple Bar and the bread is made from bagasse. What is that? It is a byproduct of the barley malting process and is often used as feed for livestock or thrown straight into the trash.
This process was not easy. Converting bagasse into flour required five years of research and coordination with many different industries. And that’s important, said Facundo Imas, one of Temple Bar’s four owners, in an interview.
A “residue” that closes in everywhere you look
Temple Bar currently produces approximately 100,000 liters of beer per month at its factory in Pilar, Buenos Aires Province.
Of this, only about 20,000 kg of beer waste, called bagasse, remains.
Although the company considers its production to be “small”, it is interested in finding alternatives to this organic waste, thereby setting a precedent that can inspire the giants of the beer industry, who produce millions of liters of beer every month.
Taking into account the principle that “what is waste to one person is a resource to another,” they noted that bagasse is used in some places to cook food.
“We started research with the food engineering people at UCA, Conicet joined in and initially we started using this bagasse for mixes and making pizzas and hamburger buns in our bars. The truth is that people liked it very much, the product tasted very good and, what we saw with the UCA, was that it had very good properties because by removing the starch everything that had to do with carbohydrates became , greatly reduced and the fiber and protein content improved. It’s closed everywhereImas said.
However, they encountered two problems: In order to produce on the desired scale, the bagasse had to be dried very well and processed into flour to facilitate transport conditions. The other obstacle was that the product was not included in Argentina’s food law. “We stop it there to find our way back“says Imas.
To overcome the first hurdle, given the scope of the project, they needed to find someone with the necessary equipment. According to them, they happened to meet Julián Varga, who had developed a special machine for drying malt waste at the Perlecop cooperative in the city of La Plata.
From Temple Bar they began supplying the wort to Perlecop to make malt powder, which they then sold to Icedream, which makes the beer brand’s burger buns.
As for the second obstacle, this year is the “Dry brewing of bagasse” as an ingredient for baked goods and pastries.
“Articulation was key. We couldn’t have done it. Researchers are really entrepreneurs, they have pushed us a lot because there are moments when you say: “What am I doing, why am I doing it?” They helped us a lot to keep pushingsaid Imas.
More production and a “virtuous cycle” with beer waste
The Argentine SME clarified that only 20% of bagasse flour is used to make bread and make it look good. “Not all of the bagasse we produce is used for ourselves. It is a small part and the rest of the children from La Plata make cookies and sliced bread from it and sell it separately. There is no commercial interest in this, it just helps us to know that we are making a good contribution and have the solution to the bagasse problem.Imas added.
The next steps?
We will try to use these beer waste converted into flour to make pizzas. “We want to centralize the bakery’s work a little and prepare the pizza rolls to be able to send them directly to the barssaid one of the temple owners.
He added: “I also think the next big step will be opening up to other bars. I would like to see other breweries and burger joints use this malt bread as well, because as demand increases, more bagasse needs to be processed to avoid waste. I think it is possible to create this virtuous circle“.
Ecoportal.com
With information from: