Fancy a beer with breakfast?!

No, I’m not suggesting that you down an ale while scooping up your favorite breaky cereal. Nor do I think replacing milk with beer atop your first meal of the day is the way to go. But what if your unwanted breakfast cereal could be turned into beer? To me this sounds like a truly fabulous and ingenious way of dealing with food waste!

Kellogg’s has pretty tight quality control, and a fair portion of the cereal they produce actually never makes it to the box. It might be a Corn Flake that’s the wrong color or shape, or doesn’t have the right amount of crunch. Or perhaps a Rice Krispie or Cocoa Krispie that hasn’t been adequately cooked or coated. I’ll hasten to add that these items are perfectly edible – they just wouldn’t uphold the high Kellogg’s standard you expect in your cereal bowl. So in a bid to reduce food waste, Kellogg’s UK has been on-selling these inadequate cereals to farmers to mix with their feed for the livestock. It is also noteworthy that as a leading global food company they run the worldwide Better Days™ platform and are part of No Kid Hungry® in the U.S.

But apart from these ventures, they’ve been looking for other ways to get their ‘waste’ cereals into the market for human consumption. A brewery might not have been anyone’s first idea, but it sure is a great one!

The United Kingdom’s Kellogg’s manufacturing plant is in Manchester, in the country’s north. And nearby in Salford is Seven Bro7hers Brewery, run literally by 7 brothers. (As a side note, they also have 4 sisters, who make gin at Sis4ers Distillery, making the McAvoys the largest group of siblings in the global alcohol industry!) These boys are always interested in creating unique thirst quenchers – last year, Seven Bro7hers turned out “Throw Away IPA”, made with 30% unwanted Cornflakes and 70% wheat. It was a roaring success, so they’re at it again! This time they’re producing “Sling it Out Stout”, a chocolate stout using unsellable Cocoa Krispies (Coco Pops as they’re called in the UK), and “Cast Off Pale Ale”, a double dry hopped pale ale, from unusable Rice Krispies. Both Seven Bro7hers Brewery and Sis4ters Distillery have sustainability written into their ethos. Maybe growing up with 11 siblings teaches you about only taking your fair share, and being responsible with resources. So decreasing food waste would come quite naturally.

But there’s another interesting facet to this: the chocolate and vanilla flavored breakfasts will be replacing malted barley in the beer. In fact each of these beers uses 80kg (177 lb) of the cereals instead of the equivalent in barley. Why does this pique my already beer loving interest? It also piques my climate change interest.

In the coming years, if there’s no arrest of climate change, and the extreme heat and droughts continue, we’ll see a great scarcity of crops such as barley, meaning an increase in their prices. A study undertaken by The university of East Anglia in the UK, used climate change and economic modelling to predict the effect of climate change on barley yields, beer consumption and beer price, worldwide. Their models produced unnerving results for beer fans: some markets are likely to see huge increases in cost of the very popular beverage – 300% in Ireland or 600% in the Czech Republic. Even the ‘modest’ global average price hike isn’t pretty, at 100%. So if brewers can replace at least some of the barley required with imperfect Rice Krispies or Cocoa Krispies, I would hope that this price increase could be kept a little lower.

While, of course there are far greater concerns resulting from the climate change impacts on staple food crops which we are on track to see, the availability and price of beer might just be the thing to grab more people’s attention and motivate them to make more environmentally responsible decisions.

Kellogg’s, meanwhile, have had an environmental and social conscience for many years. They’ve been supporting sustainable farming; responsible and ethical ingredient sourcing; working to reduce waste in all forms, not just unsellable food; reducing their carbon emissions; reducing water usage; using certified sustainable packaging; providing free breakfasts and snacks to hungry mouths; and donating huge amounts of money to charity. And they are in fact part of the group called Champions 12.3, who have pledged to work towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 12.3: to halve per capita global food waste and reduce food losses along the production and supply chain by 2030. So innovations in upcycling their unwanted Krispies is hardly a surprise. A statement from Corporate Social Responsibility Manager for Kellogg’s UK/Ireland, Kate Prince, said “Kellogg’s is always looking for innovative ways to use surplus food, and the collaboration with Seven Bro7hers is a fun way to repurpose non-packaged, less-than-perfect cereal. She added “This activity is part of our new ‘Better Days’ commitments that aim to reduce our impact on the planet”.

While these interesting, unique beers might not be available in the U.S., it’s great to know that this global company takes local actions to work for a better future for the planet.