Brewerkz, a Singapore-based brewery is swapping ingredients with local bakery chain Baker & Cook to develop the third brew in its series, “sustainable beer”.
The craft brewery has teamed up with the Singapore bakery chain, swapping surplus ingredients to make both a new brew and a new bake.
Brewerkz made use of surplus sourdough bread from Baker & Cook to brew its new EarthBrew Sourdough Pale Ale. Baker & Cook meanshile uses upcycled brewers spent grains from Brewerkz to bake its NEWGrain+ Sourdough.
Head brewer at Brewerkz, Wee-Tuck Tan, told the drinks business that this was their third sustainable beer collaboration, and their first sustainable food product using brewers’ spent grains.
The first which was called the Islander Brew made in collaboration with Sentosa, was a certified carbon neutral beer series an island resort off Singapore’s southern coast. The second NEWBrew, was made in collaboration with Sngapore’s Public Utilities Board (PUB), and made using high-grade recycled water.
Tan explained that they were looking to expand on this series of sustainable beer and had it in mind to work with a bakery and to use their surplus bread to make a beer, and for the bakery to make a bread using spent grains from their brewing.
as Baker & Cook are a well known local artisanal bakery, and a local brand like us they were a natural choice. When the idea was shared with them, they embraced it fast since they were already thinking about the same kind of collaboration.
Bread is collected from retail clients of Baker & Cook, including supermarkets and online delivery platforms. After collection, the bread is toasted and mixed in with the grain bill before the brewing process begins.
Approximately 180 kilograms of surplus sourdough bread is used for every 2,500 litres of beer. 20% of the beer’s grain bill is made up of the toasted sourdough.
Fresh spent grains which are the residual by-product of Brewerkz’s beer brewing process are added at the beginning of the sourdough-making process to make the bread. Each loaf of bread contains 64g of NEWGrain+ or 30% of the baker’s flour recipe.
The two products also making the perfect pairing, according to Tan. “At our restaurants, we created a BBQ pulled-pork bruschetta, and an avocado crab bruschetta using the NEWGrain+ sourdough. He said they have been getting fantastic reviews especially paired with the Earthbrew Sourdough Pale Ale.
EarthBrew Sourdough Pale Ale and NEWGrain+ Sourdough will be exclusively available at Brewerkz and Baker & Cook.
Brewerkz developed the collaboration to create a food waste reduction as part of its sustainability mission.
Earlier this month, the new brew was launched at the Brewnanza Fest 2023, a craft beer festival held at Bayfront event space, to a positive reception from consumers. They had very good reviews for the beer and people are pleasantly surprised when they learnt of the backstory, and how it was not so complicated at all to create circular food and drinks product, Tan said.
