Inside The Factory

We were so excited to be featured on BBC One's Inside the Factory on 7th January 2025. Cherry Healey and the team visited us at Curious, one of our breweries, to see how we’re turning surplus bakery bread into award-winning beer - and we had an absolute blast showing them how it’s done!

Bread waste is a huge issue in the UK, with 1 million loaves thrown away every day. Since 2016, we’ve been brewing a tasty solution - turning leftover loaves into liquid gold. Here’s the lowdown on how we do it…

Our Brewing Process – From Bread to Beer

Rescuing the Bread: Surplus bread arrives at our brewery in the form of dried breadcrumbs. These come from bakeries, supermarkets, and the sandwich industry. Each 15kg sack equals about 600 slices of bread

Mashing: Typically, beer uses 100% malted barley for fermentable sugars, but we use a mix of 75% malt and 25% bread. We add the breadcrumbs (with the barley) to hot water in the mash tun.This releases the sugars we need to ferment the beer. For every 5000 litres of water, we add 115kg of breadcrumbs. Which is a win for the planet and the beer! The barley’s amylase enzyme breaks down the starches, releasing the sugars that yeast will later turn into alcohol. The result? A unique, delicious liquid with a warm, malty aroma.

Lautering: After the mash has completed, the liquid, now called “wort”, is separated from the grain in a process called lautering. The wort is drained, leaving behind the spent grain. Then it is moved to the brew kettle. As the wort is being transferred to the kettle additional hot liquor is added to the mash, called the sparge, in order to extract the most amount of sugar possible from the grain and bread. 

Hop It Up: Next we add hops to introduce fruity, floral, and bitter flavours. The mixture is then boiled for an hour before heading to the fermenter.

Fermentation: Yeast is added, and the fermentation magic begins! Over 10 days, the yeast converts the sugars into alcohol and CO2, turning the liquid into beer.

Raising a Toast: Once fermentation is complete, the beer is canned or kegged and sent out to our amazing stockists.

How Much Bread Do We Save?

Each batch we brew saves thousands of slices of bread from waste. For example, the batch featured on Inside the Factory rescued 6,600 slices! There is around a slice of bread in every pint of Toast. One pint, one slice!!

Where to Find Toast 

You can grab a can of delicious Toast beer from our supermarket mates: Co-op, Ocado and Waitrose so stock up on your next weekly shop! We’re also available in a whole host of independent outlets, pubs, bars and restaurants. Use our handy store locator to find your nearest stockist.

Thanks again to Inside the Factory for letting us share our story. If you missed it or just want to relive the fun, enjoy it on iPLAYER here. Cheers!