Spent Grain Bread from beer 'left-overs'

If you like a hearty, nutty whole grain bread, you need to try making bread using the spent grains from brewing beer. Local breweries will give you the spent grains which many use for farm animal feed or composting and bread making. Not having a farm, I will use my spent grains to experiment with bread recipes.

The first spent grains I used were from Jade, a beer produced at Foothills Brewery in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

I dried the grain in the oven at 170 F and ground it up a bit in the food processor. It doesn't quite grind down to a flour consistency, but makes a fine grain which is great for the bread.

The recipe shows measurements in ounces and grams. A digital scale is useful for exact measurements.

 Then I make the spent grain bread.

Once the grains are dried and ground, they can be stored in the freezer for future batches. Tomas Rohner's directions for the spent grain sesame bread (see link above) are easy to follow and not technically difficult. It just takes time for the pre-ferment, 12-18 hours. The steps are shown using a bread machine, but I just mix in the Kitchen Aide and knead by hand.

Now I have another batch of spent grain from Natty Greene's Brewery in Greensboro, North Carolina. It is a pale ale spent grain. I also got a cup of the wort.

Doing a little research on the internet I found a recipe using the wet spent grain from the American Homebrewers Association and advice on substituting some wort for part of the water in the recipe. This was easy to mix in a large stainless steel bowl. I kneaded it, adding flour until it was no longer sticky, just a little tacky, and put it in the cleaned, oiled bowl and covered it to rise.







I made the bread a little differently using the second batch of bread from the Natty Greene's spent grain. Using the recipe from the American Homebrewers Association (see link in previous paragraph)

I used 1 cup of whole wheat flour in addition to almost 4 cups of bread flour and used honey instead of sugar. Just use 1 teaspoon of the honey to activate the yeast and put the rest in the bowl with the other ingredients. Instead of 3 cups of wet spent grain, I used 1 packed cup of wet spent grain that had been ground up in the food processor.  This wet spent grain recipe doesn't require a long preferment like the recipe from Rohner mentioned above. You can mix it in the morning and bake in the early afternoon.

The half sheet pan in the back has spent grain that has been dried in the oven, 170 degrees, stir it occasionally until it is dry and leave the oven door open slightly so that moisture can escape.





The loaf to the left has risen, been misted with water and slit with a serrated knife.

It has a light texture and browns nicely in the oven.

All ready for that tomato sandwich, it is summer after all!











Even if there isn't a brewery near you, so many people brew craft beer at home, it may be possible to find a local source for spent grain.

Happy Baking!