Surplus waste brewer Beyond Belief Brewing Co has sealed a bricks-and-mortar grocery debut.
Cans of its Zenith Pasta IPA (rsp: £3.25/440ml) will land in 400 Sainsbury’s stores nationwide on Monday (16 June).
The brewery, which launched on Ocado last year after securing funding from an Innovate UK Smart Grant, is an offshoot of pasta supplier and fourth-generation family business Ugo Foods.
It makes its beers using a patented process that replaces 50% of base malt with surplus food, chiefly fresh pasta. The brews are created on Beyond Belief Brewing’s pilot kit in Borehamwood before being scaled up at partner breweries.
Launching into mainstream retail was a major milestone in Beyond Belief’s mission to “help people rethink what’s possible in the beer industry”, said head of brand Freddie Ugo.
“It’s unmatched with anything we’ve done before, not just in terms of the scale but also the activity we’ll be doing with fins alongside to highlight our surplus mission,” he said. “Once people start to understand that surplus doesn’t affect the quality of the beer and doesn’t need to be this weird thing only one company does, then we’re predicting a whole industry-wide shift.
“We’re doing the innovation, figuring out thee process and working with co-brewers to brew on their equipment so that eventually everyone can do it.”
Having proved proof of concept with its pasta beers, Beyond Belief was now in conversations with retailers about how it could utilise other surplus food waste to produce beer, Ugo revealed.
“Jetsam, our flapjack stout, was the first example of that, but there’s so many more things that we’re trialling,” he said. “We’re looking at all forms of bakery waste as base malt replacement, working with the likes of Sainsbury’s to see what other starch-containing carbohydrates surplus they have and seeing if we can turn it into beer.”
Beyond Belief is not the first brewer to major on using surplus food waste. Toast Brewing, which makes beer from surplus bread, was founded in 2015 by Rob Wilson and Louisa Ziane.
Toast’s beers are produced at Freedom Brewery and sold in Waitrose and on Ocado.
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