Get Wasted On Waste With Toast Ale

In the UK alone, 24 million slices of bread are tossed in the garbage every day. With that many carbs going to waste (44% of all bread), there has to be something we can do tackle so much waste.

Well, for starters, we can make some beer.

Toast Ale is looking to help conquer food waste, and they’re doing it by brewing one beer at a time, or as they’ve put it, “getting wasted on waste.” Toast Ale replaces a third of the malt in the mash tun with unused loaves and crusts sourced from bakeries and sandwich makers to create their delicious brews. The rest is just hops, yeast, and water.

Inspired by Babylone, a beer created by the Brussels Beer Project using a 7,000-year-old recipe  with fermented bread, founder Tristram Stuart launched Toast in 2015.  After perfecting their recipes alongside Hambleton Ales, they now brew 5 different beer like the Much Kneaded Lager and the Bloomin’ Lovely Session IPA at the Wold Top Brewery.

With packaging designed by creative team Dan & Ben, the playful logo has the appearance of looking toasted and burnt, with a collection of crumbs gathering at the bottom of the label. They’ve even shared statistics around global food waste.

At a recent Ted Talk, Toast CEO Rob Wilson talked about Toast having four goals. First and foremost, they needed to create a great tasting beer that hop aficionados would actually drink. Second, and most importantly, they wanted to tackle the food waste epidemic. Next, they wanted to share their message about food waste and what kind of steps we can take to help reduce it worldwide. Lastly, all of the proceeds go Feedback, a charity founded by Tristram Stuart that has a mission of halving food waste by 2025.

And, as promised by Stuart and Wilson, once there’s no more bread waste, there will be no more Toast. Of course, with all of that wasted bread in circulation, we might be enjoying Toast for quite some time.

If you can’t find Toast at your local gastropub or bottle shop, don’t worry, they’ve offered up a homebrew recipe using old bread over at their website. Just don’t ask us for grams or liter conversions—that’s what Google’s for.