Beer is America’s favorite alcoholic beverage, and if the number of craft breweries are proof, its popularity shows no signs of waning. But our love affair with beer has had the unintended consequence of creating massive amounts of waste.
Every year brewers in the United States produce six billion pounds of spent grain, a byproduct of the beer making process. While many breweries have relationships with farmers where they give or sell the grain to be used as animal feed much of it is still discarded.
Canvas, a New York City company, is hoping to give spent grain a second life with its new line of plant-based beverages. While the name spent grain may imply it is depleted of any nutritional value, it is actually quite the opposite. While the starch is extracted from the barley during the beer making process, the fiber and the protein remain in the discarded barley, which is what Canvas is capitalizing on to create its nutrient dense beverages. Each 12 ounce bottle of Canvas contains nearly half the daily recommended dietary fiber, complete plant protein and medium-chain fatty acids.
In the past, spent grain has been challenging to upcycle, because it is highly perishable. So, in partnership with Anheuser-Busch InBev, the companies developed a proprietary process whereby the spent grain goes through a lactic acid fermentation process similar to kimchi or kombucha in order to preserve it.
As a partner and sole investor in Canvas via Zx Ventures, AB InBev’s incubator and venture capital group, the multinational company’s breweries have become fertile ground for Canvas to perfect the process. Since spent grain has a short life span, Canvas has created a processing facility out of a shipping container and installed it in one of AB InBev’s breweries, so it can apply its fermentation process immediately after the grain comes out of the tank.
While one can imagine licensing opportunities and other applications for Canvas’ technology, the company is not currently interested in doing so for alternate revenue streams. But with 1.3 billion metric tons of food lost or wasted every year, Canvas does see an opportunity for the technology to be implemented at scale at other breweries as a way to have a social impact on waste and hunger.
“When you look at the numbers of malnourished people in the world the implications are really huge,” said Sarah Pool, co-founder and CEO, Canvas. “Instead of just going to waste, we are providing a source of plant-based fiber and protein that comes from upcycled grain. It is solving multiple problems at once.”
Initially, the product will be available for purchase as part of its Kickstarter campaign that is running for the entire month of August. Canvas is hoping to raise $25,000 in pledges to help fund its first production run. In September, the product will be available for purchase on its website, and the company is planning for its first retail launch.
Canvas comes in five flavors, including Original, Cold Brew Latte, Cocoa, Turmeric Chai and Matcha and will have a suggested retail price of $4.99 when it hits stores in fall 2017.
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