Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
Here in the U.S., malt leftover from brewing tends to go to animal feed or barley milk, dog biscuits or compost but a Japanese company, Kitafuku has another upcycled use for malt, “craft beer paper,” paper products that can be used in beer promotion such as tickets, menus, coasters and drink holders.
This is a brilliant loop for a brewery. Order a beer from a menu made from the previous batch of the same beer you are drinking now.
Count me as one of the killjoys who does not understand cornhole popularity at breweries. Granted, waaay better than any beer place with ax throwing but still not for me.
That said, mini-cornhole sounds like a fun little enterprise. I have bottlecaps back from the era of bottles, so I would be ready to toss. Plus it is a easy little funcycling activity. Just find a sixer of Drakes beer which isn’t hard to find in LA and get your scissors out.
Craft brewing is about creativity and we need that creativity brought by people like Local Plastic at every business step of a brewery. With the massive spike in to-go 4 and 6 packs, we need to find ways to think about making this better. Like these cardboardy holders from Highland Park Brewery.
I am not anywhere in the vicinity of “handy” but with such cool can designs, I felt it was a shame to just chucking the empties into the recycle bin. So first, I made a mobile of Brouwerij West cans to hang in my office and now, I have put some to use in an experimental garden.
I removed the can tops, then punched holes in the bottom of each can, added some soil, and then seeds and water. I used mostly 16oz cans but also a crowler and a 12oz can. Whether the seeds take root or not is up in the air. But it is a fun afternoon spent playing in the dirt.
I don’t think that brown bananas or lumpy apples will be the new hazy IPA but with an emphasis on upcycling and making the most of the fruit and vegetables that are grown, one company, Hazel Technologies is creating products to slow the inevitable decay of food.
Per a recent article in the Los Angeles Times that leads to its own waste. R&D has to be done on actual fruits and that creates a whole separate waste cycle but Hazel has gotten creative and is taking “discarded passion fruit and making a sour IPA, and discarded bananas and making a banana rum. He (the company founder) has a fridge full of dragon fruit and is considering making a dragon fruit beer.”
I have heard about re-use of hops and small beer but this would be a whole new world for whatever brewery is really into conservation.
There is some found art that is good and others that are just fine. I find the flowers that RVA Capworks makes to be really well done.
Joshua Stolberg makes more than flowers and you should check out his portfolio. It must take some serious dexterity to pull the bottlecaps into just the right position. I like the business card holders and star magnets as well. I think the larger signs get a little much but the little things have pop to them.
You can learn more about RVA Capworks in this Richmond newspaper article.