New Company Combats Food Waste by Turning Brewery Byproduct into Low-Gluten Flour

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PROVIDENCE — While you might give a thought to the hops in your beer, spent grain isn’t something you ordinarily might think about when you kick back with a cold one.

But, aside from the beer in your glass, spent grain is one of the main byproducts of the beer-making process. The grain is typically discarded after brewing, but a group of recent graduates from Johnson & Wales University has formed a company that repurposes spent grain into flour that can be used in baking.

Sam Gannon, Jessie Pulling, Natasha Daniels, Nicole Gresko, Victor Eng, Ray Holloway, and Sam Burgess formalized the business plan for OURgrain after winning the “Evolution of Food Waste” competition at the 2017 annual conference of the Research Chefs Association.

Holloway and Burgess had been dabbling in home brewing and became interested in how they could use the grains left over after a brew…