Hackney Brewery and the anti-food wastage charity Feedback, have teamed up to create a beer that's made from bread that would otherwise have contributed to Britain's food wastage. Feedback, a UK based charity dedicated to putting a stop to global food waste, have teamed up with Hackney Brewery to create Toast Ale, a beer made using unsold pieces of bread.

The figures relating to food waste in the UK make for alarming reading: of the 15 million tons of food waste we produce both commercially and from households, 44% is made up of bread. In effect, we throw away enough bakery goods to alleviate the malnourishment of 26 million people.  

However, the initiative aims to offset this dramatically, while simultaneously producing a delicious beer. Each 330ml bottle will contain one slice of  unwanted bread, and all profits will go directly to Feedback.

The founder of Feedback, Tristram Stuart, hopes that the drive will eventually end the need for the beer to be created.

We hope to eventually put ourselves out of business. The day there’s no waste bread is the day Toast ale can no longer exist – Tristram Stuart

The beer is crafted when excess bread (gathered from bakeries, supermarkets and delis) is sliced and mashed to create breadcrumbs, then toasted (hence the name) and brewed with malted barley hops and yeast to create a pale ale that, according to John Swain of Hackney Brewery, stands up to other craft beers.

Tristram Stuart has open sourced the recipe so that other breweries can take up the baton; the hope is that the initiative will go nationwide.

The twin issues of food wastage and a need for concerted efforts to create sustainability are explicitly a global one, but beginning the quest to tackle them here in the U.K ought to be the first step.