Northern Spent Grains LLC — Department of Agriculture SBIR Phase I: 8.5

Description

We brew - and drink - a lot of beer in America.Approximately 202 million barrels of beer areproduced domestically per yearand all of that alcohol requires fermentable sugars which comepredominantly from malted barley.Barley starts as a highly nutritious grain known to be rich inprotein fiber and antioxidants.After the brewing industry borrows it to extract the leastnutritious portion of the grain (the most soluble enzymatically-accessible carbohydrates) we areleft with 4.7 million metric wet tons of an extraordinary nutritionally-potent grain known asbrewers' spent grain (BSG).Unfortunately BSG is a very challenging grain: it spoils quicklyrequires milling takes the levity out of bread contains gluten that doesn't provide theadvantageous qualities of its wheat counterpart and has moisture absorption characteristics thatcomplicate incorporation into bakery products.These challenges often result in BSG ending upas a major underutilized waste stream that is used as fertilizer ruminant feed or pig feed.Evenwhen used as feed BSG can spoil quickly and much gets abandoned.The purpose of thisproposal is to directly address technical challenges in fractionation and extrusion/expansion thatif successful will enable a highly nutritious grain to be the star of healthy puffed snacks for bothpeople and pets.