Our food waste friends at Toast Ale were faced with having to waste unsold beer after their customer, ExCel London, had cancelled orders for kegged beer when it was transformed into the NHS Florence Nightingale Hospital.

We knocked our heads together and came up with a dastardly plan: to save the beer and benefit some of societies most vulnerable.

“As an organisation that set out to change how society values food waste, having to scrap this unsold beer was causing us sleepless nights. Upcycling it into a fantastic product that will also benefit those hit hard by Covid-19 is the silver lining we needed.” - Toast CEO Rob Wilson

Distilling surplus beer isn’t new. It’s been done for years and is part of distilling’s rich history of using surplus agricultural and food produce to make spirits. We’ve kinda lost touch with that in the UK, but in Europe, waste beer often ends up as an ‘Eau-de-vie de Bière’ or ‘Bierbrand’.

Given our raison d’être is to use surplus produce, this was right in our comfort zone and once we had disgorged the beer from the kegs and de-gassed it, it was a case of pumping it into our still and skilfully distilling it to capture the best of the hoppy maltiness to achieve a refined, fine spirit.

The result is “Inbread Moonshine”, an Eau-de-vie de biere with a 44% alcohol content - also the percentage of bread that goes to waste. It’s a clear spirit, most akin to an unaged whisky. There are delicate aromas of hops and freshly baked bread, hints of maltiness which develop further on the palate with flavours of warm shortbread, coffee and chocolate, and a sweet hoppy finish with a big juicy, creamy mouthfeel.

Every bottle of Inbread Moonshine will fund 10 hot meals for vulnerable families through our partnership with food waste charity Feedback. Every time you make one of the custom designed cocktails below, you’ve bought freshly made hot food for someone that might otherwise have skipped a meal.

Serves & Cocktails

We recommend trying your Moonshine in a Bloody Mary, as a long drink with Ginger Ale, in a Sour or savoury Martinis. We’re so grateful that some of our favourite cocktail friends have given their time to support the project with a custom cocktail.