Stronga has developed optimum solutions for drying brewer’s grains; also commonly referred to as spent grain, brewer’s spent grain or ‘BSG’.
Spent grain, the leftover malt after the mash has extracted most of the sugars, proteins, and nutrients, can often constitute a massive 85% of a brewery’s by-product. Through drying and preserving this abundant grain by-product, craft breweries have developed innovative ways to prevent their spent grain going to waste, thus improving their profits and environmental footprint over time.
This article and the video below present the many benefits available to breweries through drying and preserving their spent grain by-product, using existing residual thermal energy.
Closed-Loop System
Through drying spent grain, breweries can blend the dry output with wood chip for use on-site as an energy source, creating a ‘closed-loop system’. A ‘closed-loop system’ is the economic model of a useful circular economy. Spent grain by-product can be upcycled into a useful fuel to power the brewing process, thus avoiding fossil fuel usage with a renewable biomass source.
Drying Brewers Grains using Residual Heat
Our supremely efficient continuous brewer’s grain flow dryers enable breweries to dry grains using local process heat immediately after the brewing process. Drying spent grain preserves the product for use as an animal feed, human food ingredient or blended energy source.
FlowDrya brewer’s grains drying equipment is easy to install and simple to operate via the HMI DryStation™ touchscreen. FlowDrya is available at great value for money and can be operated with minimal supervision thanks to automatic mode of operation. We work together with the brewery to design the optimal size and capacity spent grain dryer.
FlowDrya efficiently transforms fresh wet brewer’s spent grain…
Into high value, stabilised and reusable dry output...
Sustainable Uses of Dried Spent Grain
Discover below a few of the many uses of dried spent grain; only made possible when you invest in highly efficient, ultra-reliable FlowDrya continuous drying technology from Stronga.
1. Brewers Grain Food Ingredient
The high protein and fibre content of dry spent grain makes it an obvious ingredient for healthy human foods. Grains can be used to replace flour in baked goods and other foods such as breadsticks, cookies and crackers.
A case study by ‘NETZRO’ found that, based on the quantity of wheat grown in the US and the potential of spent grain to replace roughly 20% of traditional wheat flour, if BSG flour were adopted to its full potential it would result in 12.6 million acres of land being freed up to grow other, more nutrient-dense grains. This is a fantastic use of dry spent grain that can help reduce the requirement for growing new grain with the associated carbon footprint.
2. Brewers Grain as Livestock Feed
The low cost and high availability of spent grain has led to its use as livestock feed. Brewers grains can be dried to preserve the product for a long time, and then fed to livestock for weeks and months to come. The high protein content in spent grain offers a wide variety of amino acids essential in the diet of cows, chickens and other farm animals.
3. High Energy Blended Biomass Fuel
requirements. This helps breweries create elements of a circular renewable resource, enabling them to use brewing by-products as an internal energy source.
In one example, the ‘Alaskan Brewing Co’ uses their spent grain to fuel a biomass steam boiler that reduces the amount of fuel needed for both the brewing and grain drying processes. With Stronga FlowDrya technology, breweries can take sustainability to a new level through drying raw material waste to power daily brewing operations, thus creating a perpetual loop that conserves energy, saves money and is readily available.
Transforming By-Product into Added Value Dry Output
Stronga help clients with residual heat to easily transform brewer’s grains into highly valuable dry output. FlowDrya grain drying equipment is in increasing demand and we are committed to helping brewery’s reduce costs and improve profits from utilising the by-product from the brewing process.
Quality coupled with efficiency can be found in each and every brewer’s grain dryer from Stronga.
Contact Stronga
Stronga work together with the client to build bespoke dryers, optimised to the unique properties of your spent grain by-product. Contact our friendly and knowledgeable sales team today to discuss the details of your spent grain drying project. We look forward to hearing from you.
Email sales@stronga.co.uk or call 01992 519000.
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