It's an essential ingredient in beer, but what do brewers do with spent grain?
11:30 am, Mar. 1, 2021
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Steve Finnie, head brewer and co-founder, dumps a wheelbarrow of spent grain into a hopper on Wednesday, February 24, 2021, at Little Thistle Brewing in Rochester. The grain is then picked up by a local farmer for cow feed. (Traci Westcott / twestcott@postbulletin.com)
A fan of beer would never consider leaving an unfinished beer in a glass to be dumped. Producers of beer feel that way about their ingredients.
Once the sugars and flavors from grain to make beer are extracted for brewing, the grain — now a thick, warm, wet mass — still has use.