Magazines » September/October 2009 » Breweries and Bakeries: Kneading Each Other
Belgium-born Olivier Vrambout is one smart guy. Since November 2008 the owner and head baker at Stillwater, Minnesota’s Bikery, a combination bike shop, café, and bakery, crafts bread using spent grain from the city’s newly established Lift Bridge Brewery. Vrambout has worked with and around beer for most of his life and sees bread and beer as almost inseparable. “In both brewing and baking you use many of the same ingredients,” says Schwarz. “How you go about it and what you end up with are very different, but there are some parallels.”
Bakers have utilized spent grain and wort to add flavor, texture, and sweetness to loaves for centuries, though with revived interests in buying local, supporting small business, and maximizing dollars, partnerships between local microbreweries and artisan bakeries are finally catching on in the States.
“It wasn’t something we were seeking,” says Lift Bridge CEO Dan Schwarz. “But once Olivier mentioned it, we thought for sure we had to do this -- it’s a natural fit.” A couple times each month, Lift Bridge delivers its spent grain and wort to The Bikery, where Vrambout mixes them into loaves with the right consistency, texture, and taste for his costumers. To produce bread that equally satisfied the two businesses, Vrambout ran test batches and consulted Lift Bridge’s owners for feedback, resulting in two initial varieties: a simple wheat bread made from a saison, and a more complex blue cheese and walnut bread using spent grain and wort from the brewery’s cookie-inspired biscotti beer.
It might appear that beer makers are getting shortchanged by giving away their spent grain, but the brewer-baker relationship is actually mutually beneficial: Breweries receive complimentary loaves, and reach consumers from a different angle; many customers are drawn to the reuse-and-recycle idea, and in turn support participating businesses. As for The Bikery-Lift Bridge partnership, Vrambout and the brewery’s owners have forged a friendship beyond commerce -- one that willhopefully lead to even more collaborations.
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This article originally appeared in the September/October 2009 of DRAFT Magazine
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