In this week’s episode, I am going to talk to Dan Kurzrock. He’s the founder of an innovative company that takes the used grain from breweries called ReGrained. We will talk about him and his company and all about the things we can do to up-cycle your grains and re-use them.
Links:
Daniel Kurzrock Instagram’s account-https://www.instagram.com/dkurzrock/
Daniel Kurzrock LinkedIn’s account- https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielkurzrock/
ReGrained website – https://www.regrained.com/
ReGrained Instagram’s account – https://www.instagram.com/regrained/
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Show Transcript
AI created it will have many errors.
Colter Wilson: On this week’s episode, we’re going to talk to Dan Kurzrock. He’s the founder of an innovative company that takes the used grain from breweries. And up cycles it into usable food products. And Dan started out as a home brewer and really got the entire idea for his business, from his home brewing experience when he was younger.
So we’re going to talk about Dan and the things that you can do to up cycle your grains and reuse them and a bit about his company called regrade. We’ll get into all that this week on homebrewing diy
And welcome back to home brewing DIY the podcast that takes on the do it yourself, aspect of home, brewing gadgets, contraptions, and parts. This show covers it all. On this week’s show, we’re talking to Dan Kurzrock, we’re going to talk to him about regrade and we’re also going to discuss with him ways that you can personally up-cycle your spent grain and turn it into food.
It’s a really fun and cool conversation. And he even gives us a amazing recipe in the episode where we will learn how to make flour out of your spank rain. So stick around for the interview. But first I’d like to thank all of our patrons over Patrion. It’s because of you that this show can come to you week after week, head on over to home brewing DIY.
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I had kind of a cool experience this week. I had a James Spurgeon who was on the show last week, talking about harvesting and reviews and When we were having our conversation about that in doing our recording. He let me know that he was coming to Colorado because he is from Colorado and he was coming to visit some family. And the cool thing is, is he drove from Texas and we were able to actually kind of meet up. Uh, we were.
We met up at a park, did some social distancing. I also played a little Frisbee golf and he hung out with me and a couple of my friends and, uh, we were able to get some beers from him and I’m really excited to try some of his beer. He gave me some cover bikes and some sours. And so we’re going to actually do a cool beer tasting.
Probably sometime in the next couple of weeks where I’m going to go through some of James, his beers. Uh, get him on the horn and do a quick little beer tasting with him and, uh, see, you know, what kind of beer he really makes. So pretty excited about that. And once again, thank you so much, James, for taking the time.
Couple of other things going on in the brewery. I sold my Kegel today. Kind of crazy. I’m getting an, I also got rid of my propane burner, so I am officially going electric. I have a mash and boil system. Gonna go with a. Uh, one 10 version to get started until I can get to 20 put into my garage. I do have the panel for it, I just need to get it run.
I know it’s pretty inexpensive, but you know, we’ll see what happens, I’m excited about I’m going to make an October Fest this weekend. Gonna do a pseudo October Fest using the Of Ike and try to ferment it in the mid seventies, maybe low eighties and see how clean I can make it. And then I’m actually gonna try to.
Take it to Jim who was in episode three and not tell him that it’s a pseudo logger and see what he thinks. So. Um, I have to record that as well. Well, Let’s jump into this week’s episode we’re going to talk to dan kurzrock and we’re going to talk to him about regrade
I’d like to welcome Dan Kurzrock to the show. Dan, thanks for coming on. Hovering, DIY, how are you doing today?
Daniel Kurzrock: I’m doing great. Thanks so much for having me.
Colter Wilson: Excellent. So Dan is the founder and CEO of a amazing new product called regrade. And we’re going to definitely talk about that a bit, but at his core, Dan is a homebrewer. So he wants, we’re going to talk about specifically how you can reuse some of your spent grain that you have from being a Homer.
So, Dan. Why don’t you give us a to start off a bit of history on how you started home brewing?
Daniel Kurzrock: Yeah, for sure. And before, you know, The history, just to describe what reground is today. Um, you know, we are actually an ingredient company that specializes and using novel technology that we actually patented to create a new streams of nutrition for the food world and all the people who eat food like you and me every day.
And our main ingredient actually comes from the brewing industry. So we work with commercial breweries on rescuing the grain that they’ve already used to brew beer. And for everyone listening to this, um, you know, we’re very familiar with this, uh, with, with this, with this stream. And we’re working with breweries in cities that are otherwise, it’s a lot harder for them to have farmers and, and the light come, come together.
The grain we’re in Northern California, and then we work with other food companies and we help them develop products using. This, uh, this think of it like a flower, but we also have our own line of branded products. You can find in places like whole foods and I’m stoked to get into it. More kind of the, the Genesis of this whole thing was, uh, I was an underage homebrewer.
Uh, when I was at college, I started, I learned how to make beer when I was 19. Um, a buddy of mine who was, uh, you know, my roommate for a lot of college. And one of my closest friends, um, his uncle had, had taught him and his brother over. I believe it was winter break of our freshman year. And he came back all jazzed on I’m bruising, man, we gotta, we gotta get out there and make some beer.
He started brewing kind of like, because a lot of us do using a, you know, a partial partial mash with some extract, there was a great, uh, I was in, I was at UCLA, so Culver city, home brew, who was not too far away. And, uh, we were pretty blown away by. Well, it felt like a loophole that we could perfectly legally go into the home brew shop and buy all the ingredients and the equipment that we needed needed to make beer.
Even though we couldn’t go into a grocery store to buy beer. Um, and we fell in love with the hobby. We made beer, uh, every week. Um, when we eventually we ended up, it’s kind of embarrassing to admit now, but I, at the time I did. This was, this was my, my social life. You know, we, we, we moved into our fraternity house, um, and actually kind of common had an arrangement with the, with the, uh, the kitchen where we could use the kitchen.
Um, whenever we wanted to, to make beer, we actually also commandeered, uh, one of the storage rooms in the house and use that as a. As a fermentation closet and every Friday, um, cause we were there diligent college students that until June it’s scheduling, make sure that we didn’t have Friday class, uh, pretty much ever every, so every Friday we’d make beer.
Uh, and, um, it was, and we loved it. We pretty soon got into making a, you know, doing all grain batches for a lot of the, you know, the reasons that folks listening to this, you know, do you just have, you know, greater ability to kind of play around yeah. And customize and, um, Went from five gallon, batches to 10 gallon batches.
And what really floored me was the amount of grain that we would use to make even just, you know, a five gallon batch of beer and we’d fill our mashed on with 20, sometimes 30 pounds of grain. If we were making a really, you know, high gravity brew, which as college students, uh, tended to be our priority more often, and we end.
You know, being on this, uh, in this kind of campus environment, we didn’t even have a recycling let alone a compost bin to, to take the grant to, I grew up in Northern California with a vegetable garden in my backyard. And, um, I joke that if I had gone to Berkeley or somewhere that had, you know, these, you know, more of a infrastructure, I guess for handling organic waste, I probably would have never come up with the idea because what really struck me, it was every time we made a batch of beer, I was, it felt like I was.
Making you feel like you’re making oatmeal, right. Mixing when you’re, um, making the mash. And then you’re extracting the ward from that and you’re left with these hydrated warm fragrant grains. And I was tipping them into a dumpster literally every week. Um, and that just felt wrong. It felt like there was an, it could be an opportunity there and got a little curious and I’m sure a lot of us have done this on the, you know, that are, that are listening here.
And I. I just grabbed it, you know, some of the grains out of the mash done and put it in my mouth, Judah. And it was like, wow, this is this actually. Tastes like food, like this is I’m making food every time I’m making beer. What are other people doing with this grant? And of course learned that there’s a rich history of, uh, large breweries and, um, just bruise in general, working with, you know, with ranchers and farmers and having this kind of very, uh, synergistic relationship where they would, you know, yep.
In a way, are you going to sell it at a very low cost for various agricultural? Uses. Um, but there’s home brewers who had, um, recipes for making, you know, they make like pizza dough or breads or, you know, see some brewpubs that would do the same and thought, Hey, if we can figure out how to make beer, I could probably figure I could probably make bread too.
Um, and so I tried it and made a batch of Brandon’s like, this is pretty good. I wonder if people will buy this. And pretty soon what we were, what I was doing is every, every time we made a batch of beer, I would, uh, reserve. Some of the grants. It was pretty rudimentary early on. I was just taking the, the wet grants, maybe freezing some of them.
And we kind of get into at a more sophisticated way that you can do this at home. And I would actually just mix them in hole into the dough. Um, bake off a loaf of bread. People kind of wander into the kitchen. There’s always a people around the house and curious about what we were doing and offered to sell him a.
You know, a loaf of bread and it got to the point where I was making a few dozen loaves of bread every week and using the proceeds from that to then buy more ingredients so I could brew more beer. For free. And that was really the, the Genesis of the salt bank sent me down this really exciting line kind of inquiry into what the, um, you know, the just booming craft beer industry was doing, especially urban breweries that, um, you know, have a bit of a different, uh, environment in which they need to handle their, um, their by-product streams and, you know, opportunities to help food companies create.
Great tasting, you know, better for you, better for the planet foods, but early on, it was not so altruistic. Really. It was just, Hey, we’ve got a lot of this stuff. Can we make something that people will buy and then use the proceeds from that to broom our beer? And that was 10 years ago. It’s been a lot.
It’s been a lot of fun.
Colter Wilson: Yeah. Yeah. And let’s talk a bit about, like, for example, what is leftover, right? So for example, we all know that you, like you said, it’s, it’s kinda like you’re making oatmeal and what’s left is actually the oatmeal portion and people can either, uh, I’ll admit that when I do it, I throw it right into my compost and try to reuse it there.
And so my question would be, if I were. W w what is actually left there. Cause obviously we take some sugar out, but there’s still a ton left in the grain when you’re done, right?
Daniel Kurzrock: Yeah, exactly. And it’s really the, there’s nothing calm, so glad to hear that you’re composting. Um, and that’s, that’s the most basic form of recycling for organic materials. Um, and compost is super, super important, but it’s really a question of highest use. So. You know, you’re going to compost like eggshells, for example, because you’re not going to eat eggshells, but if you have, um, food that you can eat, you know, it’s, it’s better to eat it.
So it’s all about, and it’s we call it upcycling. It’s about finding the highest use, which is, um, there’s actually, there’s actually a whole pyramid around, uh, food recovery that the EPA put out and, uh, feeding, you know, feeding people is at the very top of that pyramid as you might expect. And the reason why it’s compelling to do that with a.
With quote, unquote spent grain and I put it in quotes because the only reason this stuff is called spent grain is because it spent its ability to make more beer. It’s a technical term, uh, from the brewing industry. Cause you know, most, uh, you know, brewers homebrewers even commercial brewers, you know, your whole goal with the grain is to extract the fermentable sugars.
Right. And you know, of course there’s flavor, flavor, implications, and such from that. And if you’re really a fish, do you know what your efficiency is for your, your home system?
Colter Wilson: Yeah. My efficiency is anywhere between 75 and 80%. I get pretty good. I get pretty good efficiency.
Daniel Kurzrock: that’s, that’s really solid for, uh, for, for home brew system. And that’s, uh, that means. What it means that you’re, you’re that efficient at extracting the sugars from the grant. Right? So it means that, you know, if you’ve got an 80% efficiency, there’s, you know, 20% of the, you know, the sugar is basically put over simplifying a bit, but that’s effectively how, you know, how you can think about it.
And, but everything else is still there. So all the protein and fiber, and it’s both dietary fiber and, um, Non dietary fiber, which is also known as prebiotic fiber, which fee is, is, uh, is it can get into digestive health a bit if it’s, um, if you think it’s interesting, but it’s basically the food for you.
Think of probiotics, you know, that’s the, that’s like the fauna and prebiotics is the flora, you know, so it’s like the food for the, having like a healthy, healthy gut biome. Um, and the grain from brewing is
Colter Wilson: which makes sense because one of the processes for creating a lactobacillus fermentation is taking a handful of an washed grain and soaking it in war and you there get a lactobacillus fermentation that way Um so there’s a process in brewing that already kind of utilizes that factor Right
Daniel Kurzrock: Yeah! And it relates to digestive health, you know when you when you eat this stuff. He was a human it’s it’s really good for your gut. And so there’s it’s actually got about uh you know an average about 20% protein by weight. That’s very similar to an almond you know if you were to kind of compare this to something else as opposed to like.
Do you know to a traditional flower or something like that is it’s less than 10%? Yeah! Protein. And it’s loaded with protein with protein with with fiber with some interesting micronutrients in there and it’s also got great flavor and some functional as it turns out when you use it you know we’ve now if you can name it we’ve probably regranted at this point from snacks and bakery items like breads and pizza doughs and crackers to even applications that you might not think of like socks SS codings for things like that like a fish and chips.
Actually it was called a binder extender for like meat systems or like plant-based meat, you can use it as an ingredient for that. So there’s actually a lot of really great stuff. And they’re one of the ways I like to explain it to folks is you know a lot of people are very familiar with whey protein, W-H-E-Y. The supplement aisle, it’s in a lot of health products as a source of protein.
A whey protein comes from a sweet way which is a byproduct of dairy. Specifically when a lot of it comes from cheesemaking, and decades ago cheesemakers had a very similar arrangement with what they would do with their excesses way. We’d go to farmers, some of it would go to agricultural uses. But then the bottom line was I had to get rid of it before they could make more cheese, right? Much like a brewer, you gotta get rid of your grain.
If you want to make more beer and a market was developed for it, for food analogy, there’s actually a way producer where cheese is the byproduct. And so it’s kind of crazy, I had a totally flips and it’s a really good example of the realization of what I would describe as latent value. There’s value in this. It’s just not valuable to the brewer, and so what we’re looking to do as reground is to help through the word the value added processing to make it.
There’s actually shelf-stable and food-safe, cause it spoils very quickly. That’s one of the main challenges with it and actually help connect the dots and create a market for this that puts our resources to best use so we want to help create a food system where we can do more with less where we can be more efficient and value the limited and precious resources that we have as a planet to sustain life. And that’s a bit of I guess getting into the philosophy a little bit, that’s how we think about it
Colter Wilson: Yeah And and it’s so cool that it’s kind of something where it stemmed from your home brewing and you saw the need there immediately and then realized quickly that it was something that was a problem at scale right Uh you know yes For a home brewer we’re talking about 10 or 20 pounds of grain but for an industrial brewer we’re talking about many thousands and thousands of tons of grain Right And so
Daniel Kurzrock: And I can actually just put it into perspective a bit So like it’s about the equivalent of a pound of grain for every six pack of beer And you know it’s kinda if you want to break it down into its most uh you know bite size kind of kind of format there um for a commercial brewery you know they’re even like a small like Urban craft breweries likely using a few million pounds you know as as a domestic industry there’s we estimated about 20 billion pounds of grain used for year to make beer I mean that’s that’s that it’s a metric fuck loads You know that’s a lot it’s a lot of great
Colter Wilson: That is a lot of great that but that’s also in in your business now that’s a lot of raw material right
Daniel Kurzrock: It’s a lot! I’ll promise you it’s funny, too, because it’s not like the actual one. So we went from okay, we’re hobby homebrewers, let’s make some bread, sell it to friends. We can brew for free, that’s clever and fun and we can all feel good about it.
What if I was inspired by this idea of having a brewery bakery concept? So actually starting a craft brewery that was also a bakery and we would be fully circular operations which I still think someone should do. I would love to do it that at some point that way, I guess the luxury being able to focus on something like that. Because when it what ended up happening as we went through the exercise of looking at creating a business plan for that started talking interviewing owners of craft breweries. And this was a time when about two new craft breweries are opening per day and the in the country and realized, okay well we could do this but there’s already this huge existing supply. And I was meeting breweries that were actually having to pay to have their grain hauled away because of where they were located.
You look at a city like San Francisco and there are more breweries and neighborhoods and that’s the case. A lot of the country kinda hopefully, you know, put yourself in our shoes and imagine how like logically the vision just kept expanding to where it is now, where we that we want to use a little bit of jargon, like the the the platform connecting the dots between Breweries and food producers and also other beverage producers where there are analogous byproducts that could be put to better use with some innovative you know processing um and just culinary creativity as well.
Colter Wilson: Yeah And let’s talk about that a bit on the homebrewer scale let’s say I’m a homebrewer and I want to reuse some of the grains that I have Uh you talk a bit about you know adding them to bread but at the beginning of this call before we started recording you talked a bit about there’s you have a process to make a really cool flower that you could do at the Homebrew scale What does that process look like
Daniel Kurzrock: Yeah! It’s a very simple time is the most important ingredient with reusing or upcycling your own grains from brewing. The challenge actually is that it’s very unstable so that it’s very wet, right? It’s very hydrated no matter how good you are at extracting, as much as you can from the mash, it’s incredibly white which means it spoils very quickly. I mean you have less than a day to do something with it.
Now that’s something can be freezing it or refrigerating it. So it’s like you could put it in the fridge and it’ll stay for longer. You could freeze it and it’ll stay for even you know even even longer than that. The best thing to do is to dry it out. Once you have it, once you dry it, it is a shelf stable as you know the dry ingredients that you keep in your pantry at just a very basic home scale. Actually just to use your oven and sheet trays and and lay out a few sheet trays of grant and you can do this actually while you finish the rest of your your brew day put it on a very low temperature. Something like 200 degrees.
The lower and the longer you go the less likely you’re going to be to burn it convection works better than just a straight oven. So if you can get some air circulation there at all, they’ll dry it off estrone and stir it every 45 minutes or so. And after a few hours of doing that, you don’t need to be watching it super closely. It just, it doesn’t just need to have some time. And you know, in the oven, to dry out, it started round. And once it kind of creates a lot of steam, the water evaporating as steam and at a certain point before you want to stop it before it starts to get really like toasted and roasted.
You don’t want to roast the grains, it’ll create like flavors and be more bitter. Once it’s dry just kind of let it cool off and you can store it like that or you can use a coffee grinder or like a NutriBullet or something like that to a rowboat, too. If you have something like that to grind it, into a powder and then that will keep also again shelf stable and you can incorporate it into into recipes. So maybe you’re making pancakes on the weekend and it calls for a cup of flour. When you’re making pancakes try taking start with just a 25% a quarter cup and put a quarter cup of your spent grain flour. In that mix and so you see how you like it and kind of do some just like you do with your beard do some experiments.
If you want to put more and because he really liked the flavor and you know even at about 15% you’re getting an FDA good source of fiber and almost any recipe and so you kind of play around with different percentage inclusions on recipes that you already know like you know pancakes or cookies or bread. If you’re doing like a yeasted Bread or sourdough, some nuance there Like I reckon I definitely recommend getting a strong starter going and then mixing it into the dough not until the Lavonne. But it’s really fun to play with.
We actually like to have a lot of some of them. They are really world-renowned chefs that actually loved playing with this ingredient because of its flavor. And it also happens to bring a lot of nutrition, and by the way this helps reduce food waste. This helps put resources to their best use so it’s kind of something that tastes great. It’s good for you. And it feels good cause it’s good for the planet
Colter Wilson: So when you were figuring out this process did you make any mistakes and uh make it you know make a product that wasn’t good to eat or tasted good
Daniel Kurzrock: Oh gosh I mean we’ve made like almost every mistake in the book probably even though trying trying not to I mean what I what I joke about our early days is that we had a product that tasted like a good idea Okay People people were psyched and we were clever too Like we came up with a tagline eat beer and we put that on everything We still have like shirts and stickers and stuff That’s that say eat beer Um it was really the concept that people were were excited about Not that the products were bad they just weren’t uh you know we were not professional product helpers Right And so our first uh so we were making bread realized okay Bread is awesome Um I love gluten I love Fred
Colter Wilson: I’m a fan of gluten as
Daniel Kurzrock: I would I would hope so Um yeah yeah That we don’t subscribe to the religion of gluten free
Colter Wilson: Well it’s it’s it’s funny I did a show on gluten-free home brewing and I made a gluten-free batch of beer out of sorghum And it’s it’s good It just is it it’s just different and uh I’m not knocking anybody Who’s a gluten-free homebrewer I think that uh there’s an entire world of uh alternative grains out there that I’m still very very interested in but it is something where uh it’s just it I love a glass of beer It just has the it just the head retention everything about it That and and gluten is part of it And I
Daniel Kurzrock: Yeah And we’re and we’re for it sounds like we’re both fortunate to not have you know silly acts
Colter Wilson: Yeah exactly Exactly
Daniel Kurzrock: Call me purists, I guess. But so we all love gluten, we love making bread prom, with bread is its kind of similar to beer. It takes a long time to make, especially when you’re trying to make cricket. Dozens of loves and so the idea of having a commercial bakery was pretty out of the question for like freshmen bed. Because the other problem is the next day it’s not fresh bread anymore.
Inventory planning is also really tough, and so then my mother-in-law actually had a great home granola recipe which I asked her for and we modified that and we were you know kind of played around loose granola. They’re like, this is pretty good and then it stays good for a lot longer. We also and I, love to recreate in the outdoors and you know my business, my co-founder and I both were into like biking and skiing and that kind of stuff. And we had a lot of bars and we were like, well if we can make her NOLA why don’t we just like cut them into a rectangle and that’s a bar and the first ones or like packaged in literally in ziplock bags. And then we got like these compostable sleeves that we were heat sealing and just like sell them
I was a granola dealer basically for my senior year of college and the product again, it tasted like a good idea. Like we weren’t milling it into a powder, into a flower at the time we didn’t have a mill. We really were just trying to get feedback and see if people, if anything was resonating about what we were trying to do. And so it was very like, I would describe it as pokey. The grains are sharp they have holes and they’re not the best texture. I would say that’s one example of , we didn’t start with like the perfect food product and the whole thing with creating the bar was just to see if people would buy this and to learn and to kind of figure out if we had a real idea or not.
Another thing that we did once we started sourcing from craft breweries. We learned a lot. Just share a quick story there, so we originally using just our own grain and then we’re like okay we want to like work with craft breweries and and rescue their grain and kind of create a service for them even though we were like super small scale or like picking up 50 pounds at a time like nothing compared to what especially nothing get rid of what we’re doing now. And the first brewery that we spoke to, the owner of this brewery ended up investing in the business later on Uh they’re They were like yeah come on come on by And we came to pick up we were like great You know and we came to pick up the grain and it was it had been sitting in a not even in a silo it was like an a it’s going to dumpster you know about back um which uh Well it’s not for like this is not food safe We can not feed this to two people as it is like in our home We were very because when we’re making our own beer it’s like okay well you’ve got this it’s a food grade It’s a food process of you know you’re taught and it’s um you know it’s safe and we’re going straight from like the F you know a sanitized food container to a like a kitchen equipment where we
Colter Wilson: Yeah the food Yeah And it’s going right into like a it’s going from your your CA your mash tun right Into a five gallon food safe bucket Right
Daniel Kurzrock: Yeah Yeah And then you know we’re drying it you know drying it out or it mixing it into to a recipe and using it And then we’re like Oh okay So when we work with a brewery we got to come up with I remember we were like 22 at the time we got to come up with a way to do that This that’s that’s food safe obviously Um and so when you know that that helped us realize you know develop our Yeah our partnership model and you know really a lot of it comes down to is just having a close relationship with the brewery And you know we knew that we needed to show up like during their brew day when they’re mashing out and uh instead of bailing out into whatever they were using before we came along and providing our own containers you know for for that which we would then at the time Holloway and our Subaru you know it was like very basic um uh similar to that too Like one time as another another brewery uh one of our early Brewery partners a craft brewery in San Francisco and um they every year make an oyster stout um and their method for making an oyster stout I learned after I had already done the relatively backbreaking work at this brewery Cause you have to have to dig into the mash done with uh um just like food grade shovel basically And uh I was down like a few flights of stairs like threw out my back a few times working at that place Um but then I was about to leave and they’re like Oh by the way you want some oysters Like they were there in the in the mash I was like Oh there’s shellfish And this Great Like that’s an allergen week That’s not like Oh okay So not only do we need to coordinate the timing and things like that uh you know this all we all learned this like pretty quickly really early on but it was I think a good example of just adapting And we were like Oh so we also need to talk to them about what they’re making you know what the grain bill is Um cause we needed to have a consistent safe you know scalable supply And so like a lot of stuff like that Um
Colter Wilson: yeah it’s li it’s like the the the growing and learning what’s actually it’s like Hey I have this great idea in concept And then once you get into the reality you start to see the little nuances that happen on a daily scale Right And uh uh being able to make that into something that’s more scalable right
Daniel Kurzrock: A hundred percent
Colter Wilson: Yeah And let’s talk a bit about regrouping now and and what what scale you guys are when it comes to like how how much grain are you processing right now as a company
Daniel Kurzrock: Yeah So we’re uh we actually just built the machine that we um developed with the USDA that I was I was talking about at the at the at the top of the show So we you know we knew that we had to figure out how to process and even taking a further step back Like th one of the reasons why this hasn’t been successful in the past is cause it’s exceptionally difficult to economically in a food safe way Um Take the this incredibly hydrated material from the breweries and create a shelf stable um you know desirable ingredient out of it And we learned about a group at the USDA called the agricultural research service that was looking at creating I call it creating novel ingredients at a plant based waste which is like a super dorky way to describe upcycling And so I wrote the government a cold email and I was like Hey you know this is we’re regrade and this is what our vision is We know we’ve got a great idea We don’t know how to scale Right Okay Um is this something you could help with them And they Wrote back within a day and said this is exactly what we’re here to help with Can you come in and through a few years of of working together we had a breakthrough um that uh that we were able to end up patenting around how we can have a really high throughput process for um Doing what I just described you know creating a a scalable scalable process So we did we did we just built that machine and in 2019 and we’re about to turn on this plant It can do it about a ton an hour Um and so it’s got pretty incredible capacity uh to create supply So whereas like the bottleneck previously was how much we could we could process you know now we have um and that’s just one machine we’ve got room for you know for to you know our vision is to kind of co locate these uh breweries and various yeah Production facilities uh you know around the world to create more localized supply and not have to like ship stuff around as much Um you know so that’s you know there’s a big difference between a picking up a five gallon container of this stuff and running you know a ton of it Uh every every hour through these through these machines right now we’re doing a bit of a scale down process of that we’re doing um a few tons a week uh and You know we’re then creating uh you know creating think of it like a flower we call it super grand plus you know we’re not calling the spent grain This is rebrand super grand plus which is a bit of a mouthful but it was cool about the pluses on a nutrition label We can call out the pluses uh just like you’ve seen it an asterix organic for organic products And we can say Hey this is an up-cycled ingredient using using the plus And it’s a super grain cause it’s a concentration of all the nutrients that don’t end up in the beer Um And you know it goes into our line of nutrition bars which are sold in places like whole foods and this new lineup puff switcher um mostly available online right now but a place it’s like REI to COVID has been uh you know changed the plan Where were we Where are we I Yeah Yeah And so we’re um and then we’re in very active development with the a large number of companies of various sizes with some some products already on the market that are using super grand plus and you know more coming in 2021 And you know we expect the ingredient sales kind of that partnership model side of our business to be the The main kind of source of source of revenue the main focus uh it started the main focus with the main driver of revenue by 2022 and you know and beyond So we’re a lot of kind of blue sky ahead as to what we’re what we’re looking to do now that we have this uh this plant uh ready to go and the scalable supply And and now it’s about uh commercializing the demand side of it That’s nice
Colter Wilson: That’s that’s really really cool Especially when you think about I love your idea where you’re saying Hey well we can take the machine to the brewery And as it’s spitting out the one side it’s going right into the machine and and and basically being processed right into a food product Right And it’s just It makes it’s almost to be honest it’s it’s almost back to your original vision where you were like Hey I want to make a brewery with a with a with a bakery in the front You’re essentially doing that except for at a larger scale and doing it at a process that would actually you know make a food ingredient versus just loaves of bread So it’s kinda cool How it’s it’s it’s a it’s still a twist on the original idea in a
So if I were interested about ReGrained and I wanted to learn more about maybe some of the products that you’re making where would I go
Daniel Kurzrock: Yeah So our website is just rebrand.com We’re also super active on on Instagram Love to hear from people Um you know my email is just Dan matt@regrained.com We actually have a really cool opportunity open right now It’s not Actually we actually haven’t shared it publicly yet Um but I’m going to go ahead and share it with you with you and with you with your audience One of the ones that we’ve we’ve actually funded our business is through something called equity crowdfunding So it’s where our community and where individuals um not venture capitalists can actually own shares in the in the company even though it’s it’s very small and not public we traded um we’re doing through something called we funder There’s a ton of information about the business too on this uh this portal It’s a it’s we funder.com So uh we fund our WWII funder Comm slash ReGrained Um and there’s a lot of information about the business uh there that’s um you know we’d be stoked for for more home brewers to be you know in our community of investors So if we first did one of these campaigns and in 2018 and for us to about democratization of of our mission of our success and of kind of we’re really trying to create a movement here that’s helping to build a Better food system And you know as many folks as we can get passionate about that and thinking about how they you can reduce food waste at home how you can use your own spent grand at home and yeah Yeah That’s uh that’s what keeps us going
Colter Wilson: That’s awesome And actually if you’re listening to the show I’ll put links to their website and I’ll also put a link to their fundraising effort in the show notes So if you feel like this is something you want to dig a little bit more into or possibly support just click on the link in the show notes Well Dan I want to thank you for taking the time to come on the show this week It was This was a really really interesting conversation just because it’s something that you it starts off feeling so simple but in the end become it is actually a really cool process that you’ve created here And I’m excited to see where you guys are going to be in five years It’s it does feel a bit like the sky’s the limit So I’m excited for you guys
Daniel Kurzrock: Shit you haven’t having me on here And I’m excited to hear what what you do with your own grain after you make your next batch of beer up to send me a send me a picture of some some cookies or something
Colter Wilson: Oh man I you know I I might have to make some flour I’m in I’m on the sourdough cake right now So
Daniel Kurzrock: yes we we should talk more about that I make a lot of sourdough and I use our flour uh on the regular I can I can hook you up with a recipe
Colter Wilson: Oh yeah we’re we’re definitely getting that because uh I personally emo I’m making sourdough every week and my sourdough is and I’m actually teaching my neighbor across the street Uh Aaron who you do know Uh I’m yeah I’ve been teaching him and he’s been the he’s been the recipient of most of my extra loaves So
Daniel Kurzrock: Now I love that Maybe we can you know we’ll follow up on the on the recipe Maybe that’s something you can you can provide on your on your website too for folks
Colter Wilson: yeah we could definitely do that So Dan thank you so much for coming on the show and uh you know if there’s ever a time that you want to come back just reach out We’ll we’re glad to have you back
Daniel Kurzrock: Yeah I appreciate that Cheers
Colter Wilson: I’d like to thank Dan for taking the time to come on this week. Show. If you want to find out more information about re grained or even get a bit more information on some really cool recipes from Dan on what you can do with your spent grain head over to home brewing diy.beer, and look in the show notes.
There you’ll find all kinds of information about today’s episode and, uh, you might we’ll even have the link in there to where you can find more information about if you want to invest in re grain kind of a cool little announcement that he made there today on the show. And if you’d like to follow us on social media, you can head over to Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, just look for is under homebrewing. DIY all one word, give us a follow up. We’d love to talk to you on all of our social channels.
Well, that’s it for this week. And we’ll talk to you next week on home brewing DIY.
