After beer… granola bars? Upcycling malts less by VOYAGER BREWING!

In many cases, malt lees—by-products that emerge when beer is brewed—are thrown away as industrial waste. But VOYAGER BREWING, a brewery in Tanabe City, Wakayama Prefecture, has found a way to upcycle them into delicious “GRANOLA BARS”!

Since their founding in 2015, Kouji Manabe and his wife Shima, who run the brewery, had concerns about using every bit of their ingredients. They provided their malt lees, extracted from beer brewing, to nearby ume (Japanese plum) farmers to use as compost. So, they never wasted their malt lees from the start, but the couple wanted to take it a step further.

“Malt lees produced during prep have a very nice smell. Tasting it, you’ll discover that it’s actually sweet and fragrant,” Shima said.

Shima started thinking about upcycling malt lees as food when she was working at another brewery long before she started VOYAGER BREWING. She researched on the Internet for an upcycling business and learned about a project in the U.S. called “ReGrained” that manufactured and sold granola bars using malt lees.

“I discovered that they were collecting malt lees from nearby brewers and making handmade granola bars,” recalled Shima. (As of September 2022, ReGrained no longer sells granola bars anymore, but sells other upcycled malt lees items instead.)

Furthermore, she came across a granola bar containing malt lees, handmade at a shop in Kobe, and found it delicious. She started to think that if malt lees were made into granola bars and properly packaged, they could become products.

That’s when the pandemic struck and shipping of beer came to a halt. Shima instantly knew the time had come to tackle her endeavor.

Hence her challenge to create a prototype of a granola bar using malt lees started. Nuts, dried fruits, maple syrup, oil, and eventually oatmeal were added to the dried malt lees and baked. With many tests and trials, a prototype was finally completed in about a year.

General sales of the “GRANOLA BAR” started in January 2022. 13-14 kg of dried malt, obtained by drying about 100 kg of malt lees, was used to make 3,000 products, which sold out in merely a month. It’s selling steadily to this day.

The crunchy GRANOLA BAR has an aroma of malt lees. They’re accented with the flavor of maple syrup, the taste of nuts, and the sweet and sourness of dried cranberries.

Upon creating the GRANOLA BAR, Shima consulted the Industrial Technology Center of Wakayama Prefecture for analysis on malt lees and its components. She also received information on its rich nutritional components.

“The amount of dietary fiber and protein were as I expected or even higher. Carbohydrates were lesser too,” said Shima.

Of course, its nutrition varies depending on the type of malt used, but Shima was quite certain you could almost call it a “superfood.”

“It’s perfect not only for nibbles with beer, but also for snacks when mountain climbing, or going out on outdoor activities, or for nutritional supplements during sports,” Shima said.

So, where can you buy their “GRANOLA BAR”? Of course, your first choice would be at their VOYAGER BREWING TAP ROOM, where you can enjoy pairing it with their beer. They are also available at various shops in the area of Tanabe City and Wakayama City.