A positive pint!
Thanks to your support for Cascade, a group of entrepreneurial students are simultaneously tackling food waste and child food poverty using craft beer. We met up with student James at Nottingham pub the Crafty Crow to find out how your support is helping them brew a positive pint.
Every day, over one million loaves of bread are discarded. Meanwhile, it’s reported that 38% of children in Nottingham are living in poverty. The student-run Bread Brew’d Project is addressing these issues by using waste bread to brew craft beer with the profits benefitting local children through breakfast clubs.
Through partnerships with local breweries Magpie Brewery and Lincoln Green Brewing Co. the project has been able to brew two beers and sell them to pubs around the UK.
“We use bread that would otherwise be thrown away to brew our beer. The bread replaces 30% of the normal malt used in the brewing process – we used around 100kg of bread in our first batch.
We’ve been able to make use of our partnerships with the breweries to get our beers out into pubs around the country. Our profits then go back to Foodprint who run breakfast clubs for children around Nottingham,” said Jame
In each pint of ‘Bakers Pale Ale’ and ‘Use Your Loaf’ there is one slice of upcycled bread, with the profits going towards Foodprint’s local breakfast clubs.
The Bread Brew’d Project and Foodprint are two of more than 120 student projects made possible by your donations to our student project fund, Cascade, since it was established in 2007.
Foodprint is a student-run social supermarke tin Sneinton, which also got started thanks to generous donations to the Cascade fund. Since the project started in 2017, over 26,000kg of food that would otherwise go to waste has been sold for low prices with the proceeds covering the running of the shop. The project has since expanded, redistributing food to community cafes, food banks and school breakfast clubs.
“The fact that so much food is wasted andthat there are children who rely on breakfast clubs for their breakfast is such a terrible contradiction, especially when we go to pick the bread up and you see first-hand how much is thrown away. We have to do more.
“This project has opened my eyes, it’s changed a lot of my predispositions about poverty and social mobility. I’m fortunate that worrying about where my next meal was coming from wasn’t something I had to often think about.In my first year I was in catered halls and food is always there, but being involved in something like this has really made me aware of these issues.”
James initially applied to work on the Foodprint project, but jumped at the chance to be involved in the Bread Brew’d project when he heard about it.
“I’ve learned a lot. In a working environment like this you have to be pragmatic and be able to adapt. Being able to communicate and organise yourself well is also really important, especially when we’re all working on this project alongside University degrees. It’s been an incredible project to be involved in and we’re all so grateful for the support from Cascade.”
Search ‘Bread Brew’d Project’ to find out more about the project and where you can find a positive pint for yourself.
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