Beer draff

Culinary and circular pleasure with beer

In 2022, brewer Brunehaut, producer Abinda, retailer Bio Planet and knowledge partner VIVES combined their expertise around beer trotting. The goal? To make vegetable and organic meat substitutes with residual flows from beer. Less than two years later, the first beer draff products are on shop shelves.

Beer marc tofu burger and apero croquettes
Every glass of beer also includes 1 glass of beer marc. Good for some 230,000 tonnes of marc a year. That goes mainly to the animal feed industry. But because beer marc has a high protein content (15-25%) and a high fibre content (35-55%), it is also more than suitable for the production of vegetable and organic meat substitutes. And that knowledge is just what Brunehaut, Abinda, Bio Planet and VIVES shared.

Since 2022, they have been experimenting with beer marc, drawing up business plans and setting up a local beer marc chain. Today, that leads to the successful production of 2 beer draff products: a plant-based tofu burger and veggie apero croquettes. You can find these on shop shelves at Bio-Planet since May 2024.

Beer trotting in the food industry
The story of beer marc is not yet fully written. Besides being a meat substitute, it is also an ideal basic ingredient for breads and crackers, for example. Although today it remains mainly a small-scale production, because beer marc involves a lot of challenges: it spoils quickly, requires close cooperation between breweries and food companies, and can give a darker colour to food products. Currently, in the ‘Trot in Galop’ project, VIVES is investigating how to scale up production.