10150448From brewery waste to bakery innovation: building Scotland's low carbon biofermentation hubActiveCollaborative R&DInnovate UKScotland is in a unique position to contribute to circularity and the reduction of the carbon footprint of food production. The country produces over half a million tons of spent grains from its distilleries and breweries each year, most of which is used as feed for cattle. Fermtech are working with Abertay University on an innovative new use for this by-product. It is already used in limited amounts ground into flour, as a filler for certain baked goods and snacks. However, the taste and indigestibility limit how much can be used, so these efforts have stalled. The project partners have a new solution, adapting an ancient fermentation process, called 'koji', with modern Solid State Fermentation (SSF) technologies to turn these grains into useful food ingredients. The product - called 'Koji flour' - has valuable properties: it's easily digestible and contains healthy nutrients, has a light, pleasant flavour, and has the ability to enhance other flavours, such as chocolate and salt, meaning you have to use up to 25% less of those ingredients. What's most interesting about it is its carbon footprint. Because it has no agricultural footprint, it is 60% lower than wheat flour, and 90% lower than cocoa. So, a bakery can both save money and reduce their carbon emissions with one ingredient. The project is in collaboration with 2 local bakeries - Wild Hearth (Perthshire) and Saltire (Edinburgh), and the grains will come from 2 breweries and 2 distilleries in and around Dundee. The Fermtech/Abertay team will build out a pilot scale production system at a fermentation hub on-site at Abertay, and work with the bakeries to develop recipes to test with their customers. The science team will do full nutritional and functional tests to understand how to get the most out of this ingredients for bakers and consumers. Together, the team will prepare the production systems and customer applications to bring this valuable Scottish product to market.