From cereal, to brewer's spent grain, to Agrain®
Spent grains is the recurring ingredient in all our products. These grains are the sole reason for the existence of our company and Agrain®. But what exactly is spent grains? Spent grains is really just something as simple as "used" grain.
In this blog post I want to "get geeky" about how the spent grain is made and why the spent grains is so good, in both a sustainable and health perspective.
The danish word for spent grains is "mask", which actually comes from a Frisian word masch,which has the transferred meaning 'to let water pass'. Spent grains can be described as being the wet porridge-like mass of plant parts left in the production of beer, whisky or juice.
But what is the spent grains then and where does it come from? To understand this, it requires us to delve a bit into the process of beer brewing.
When brewing beer, malt is the key ingredient. Malt is sprouted grain, which appears during a process called grinding. Most often the malt comes from barley, but in some types of beer it can also consist of a more complex mix of several different types of grains e.g. barley, wheat, oats and rye. The malt is the root ingredient in the brewing of beer, and contributes as a nutritional source to the yeast and through its unique protein compositions the malt also forms a characteristic foam in the beer.
The malt is roasted and dried at different temperatures. The higher the temperature, the darker the malt becomes, as does the beer. In addition to influencing the colour of the beer, roasting and drying also have an effect on the taste – the higher temperature, the more flavors. The malt can be divided into three groups overall: basic malt, caramalt and special malt. The base malt is, as the name suggests, a fundamental part of beer brewing, as it contributes not only with colour and taste, but also with the enzymes necessary for the starch in the grain to be converted into yeastable sugar and thus also alcohol. Base malt types that might ring a bell are Pale Ale and Pilsner malt. It is quite possible to brew beer solely by using basic malt, however, breweries often add special malt for the sake of taste. Unlike the base malt, Caramalt and specialty malt add no sugar to the beer, but give it a different taste e.g. by giving notes of caramel, coffee, licorice and much more.
In the next step of the brewing process, the malt is used in a process called mashing. Here, the grain is broken by grinding the grains while the shell remains intact. By subjecting the malt to a step-by-step temperature cycle, it is possible to break down the starch in the grain into sugar used for the fermentation of the beer. After the mashing, a liquid - called the wort, is drained from the solids - called the mask. The herb continues in the brewing of the beer with the addition of hops as a taster and fermented which converts sugar into alcohol. Mask consists of the insoluble residues from the malting and saturation, which cannot be used in the further brewing of beer. Therefore, the mask is sorted out as a by-product that still has some of the unique taste characteristics found in the malt for the different types of beer.
A large part of the spent grains consists of insoluble fibres, and, as the name suggests, can not be dissolved in water, but it absorbs a lot of water. Among other things, the insoluble dietary fibers have been shown to have a beneficial effect on the gut microbiome and digestion – also called probiotic effect. In addition, the spent grains also has a rich protein content, which includes specific essential amino acids. It is therefore a highly nutritious by-product, which until now has been primarily used as animal feed.
200 billion litres of beer are produced every year worldwide. In Denmark, 586 million litres of beer were produced last year, which generates the equivalent of about 117 million kg of spent grains. On average, around 90 million kg of spent grains are used annually for animal feed. However, Danish breweries are experiencing a decrease in demand for spent grains for animal feed - which means a lot of the spent grains is simply being thrown out. In other words, much of the spent grains continues to be wasted.
We think this is a shame and started in the early days to explore the potential of using brewer's spent grainin normal foods. By thinking a bit outside the box, after almost 3 years we have come to market with several different products - flour, crisps and granola. And many more on the way.
As we say on all our products: let's use that grain, Agrain®!
