Toast Ale are on a mission. Set up in 2015 by food waste campaigner Tristram Stuart they’re leading a brewing movement, eliminating bread waste and helping fix our broken food system.

Using surplus bread instead of virgin barley they have, so far, turned nearly 2 million slices of bread into their award-winning beer. Bread that would have needlessly ended up the bin. And a lot of bread does end up in the bin. In fact, up to 44% of bread in the UK never gets eaten - the heels of loaves that are discarded by sandwich factories, for example, or perfectly edible bread from bakeries that’s not ‘day fresh’. A shocking waste of resources. Food production has a massive impact on the environment so to convert what would have been food waste into a pint is pure genius.

Getting Wasted Together

Functioning as a cuckoo brewery, Toast Ale brew their beer under their own license but using the premises and equipment of some exceptional breweries, currently Hepworth Brewery in Sussex.

They’ve also done some brilliant collaborations with other breweries and bakeries local to them. Check out their website to see the long list of droolworthy brews made from bready food waste ranging from ‘Beans on Toast’ Coffee IPA with Leeds-based Nomadic Beers, to Bread Pudding Amber Ale with Bristol’s Wiper & True. 

Bread Heads Doing It for Charity

There are plenty more reasons to raise a glass to the team at Toast Ale. As well as reducing food waste (and raising food waste awareness), winning more awards than you can shake a (French) stick at, they donate 100% of their profits to charity. That’s over £33,000 since 2016. Which is a nice amount of dough. The main charity they support is Feedback (www.feedbackglobal.org), which is leading a global movement against food waste. 

At the time of writing, Toast Ale are, together with Feedback, running a special Covid-19 crisis campaign where they match each beer sold online with a free meal for vulnerable people in local communities.

Net Zero Heroes

Last year, Toast Ale became a Certified B Corp, joining a community of awesome businesses that ‘balance purpose and profit’. This means that they are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions on their workers, customers, suppliers, community, and the environment.

This year, they’ve committed to improving their brewing process to maximise the fermentable sugars they extract from the bread they use in their brews so they can up the impact of each pint. They have also committed to net zero of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 - twenty years ahead of the Paris Agreement targets of 2050.

It’s not just forwarding thinking ‘do-gooders’ who are in favour of such bold, environmentally focused commitments. In a speech given at the 2019 TCFD Summit in Tokyo, Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England said “Firms that align their business models to the transition to a net zero world will be rewarded handsomely. Those that fail to adapt will cease to exist”.

Toast Ale, it seems, are really using their loaf to stay ahead of the game while saving the world.

How to Brew with Surplus Bread

Toast Ale uses leftover bread to replace one third of the malted-barley in their grain bill. They say that most types of bread will work, but to avoid loaves that contain ingredients like dried fruit or olives - unless you’re looking to add specific flavours to your brew. You should also skip oily breads like focaccia. And never use bread that has any signs of mould on it.

To encourage us all to brew with bread, Toast Ale have made their pale ale recipe available on their website. Over 3000 homebrewers used it last year alone, saving 174,310 slices of bread from going to waste.

Homebrewer tip 

You’ll need 1.5 kg of dried bread for a 25 L brew so start collecting bits of leftover bread. You can store it in the freezer before drying it. Or dry out in batches and store in an airtight container.

The shelf life of your dried bread will depend on how dry it is. “It’s important to remove as much moisture as possible (and make sure it fully cools before putting it in a sealed container).” says Louisa Ziane, COO at Toast Ale.