Go Figure: Granola Bars Made From Beer Waste Are Surprisingly Delicious

Now more than ever, people are increasingly conscious of food waste. In an era where more and more food ends up in landfills instead of hungry stomachs, one San Francisco company is trying to change all of that: Regrained takes waste from San Francisco breweries and turns it into granola bars.

Beer has four main components: water, yeast, hops, and grain. However, once the sugar is extracted from the grains, they are no longer useful, and are eventually thrown away. Regrained takes these grains and adds flax, quinoa, and a variety of syrups and honeys to bind them all together. The result is a delicious, chewy granola bar.

The company emphasizes the role it has in food conservation. One six-pack of craft beer takes roughly a pound of grains to brew. If six billion gallons of beer are brewed in the U.S. each year, then, the beer industry wastes 36 billion pounds of grain each year.

Some of that is returned to farmers to put into fertilizer, but we already have too much fertilizer as a country. Instead, Regrained turns those grains into (surprisingly delicious) bars. They have two flavors: Honey Almond IPA and Chocolate Coffee Stout. Neither tastes like beer, but both have the proper flavor profiles. The IPA is sweet and spicy, while the stout has notes of chocolate with a smoky aftertaste.

The company hopes to expand to other US cities soon with its simple credo: "We're taking something that's typically wasted and turning it into something delicious," co-founder Dan Kurzrock tells Tech Insider. As for me, I can't wait until these reach the East Coast.