Brewers leftovers- any use?

[its hilly]

There are acouple (at least) of microbreweries near me and when i passed one the other day they had bin bags full of hoppy/beery smelling stuff that looked like brown sludgy compost. Ive asked on another part of the forum about gardening uses, but wondered if it could be dried out or even used wet as feed supplements for chooks, geese and horses.
Anyone ever used it?

[chicken slave]

I know that you can use some brewers waste (barley) for pigs but really unsure about chickens. My geese just graze and I top them up now and again when the weather has been nasty with some layers and weeds that I have pulled up.

[MaureenHall]

I'd be cautious about using it as chook food (until someone tells me different). Isn't there a chance that it could ferment in their crops and cause problems? Am I looking for problems where there aren't any? Feeding it to pigs, if it ferments in their guts then they'd just fart a lot (I think). I'm interested in any other theories about this

[Bramble-Poultry]

As far as i'm aware the only useable thing for brewers waste in domestic situations is as a soil improver.

Commercially there are other uses but I'm assuming you don't have an ethanol producing licence

[pdblake]

Sounds like it'd be good dug into the veg plot to be honest.

[RichmondHens]

I agree with Maureen, I would be concerned about it causing crop problems.

[scarey55]

About a hundred years ago I worked at the Courages Brewery in Reading and we had a big lake at the front of the property where we kept disabled swans, geese, ducks etc. The security guards used to regularly go out with a bucket of brewing waste and feed it to them.

I can't say for sure if it did them any harm and it was only given as a treat but they seemed to enjoy it judging by the way they ran or flew (if they could) to get to it.

[Hilary B]

Brewer's grains (one type of by-product) are good feed for ruminants (cattle especially, but Ok for sheep and goats too), and might be OK for geese. I wouldn't think it would be ideal for chooks, might do for horses, in small quantities. What you describe doesn't sound much like brewer's grains (but might be the nowadays equivalent), so no idea where that would fit in.

[Lovage]

By-products of brewing could be Brewer's grains, spent hops or yeast -not sure which are referred to here. ''Brown sludgy compost'' sounds more like the yeast

Brewers grains have had all the sugars washed out of them to make the beer so don't see how they could ferment - should be fine for geese & chickens. We used to feed them to cows together with sugar beet pulp.

Spent hops are a great mulch and break down quite rapidly to compost , good source of Phosphate too - grab all you can

As for waste yeast - guess you could add a small ammount to compost heap but have no experience of this

[its hilly]

Thanks guys.
Think its spent hops, going to call in and ask when I'm passing tomorrow. But if its a good mulch I'll have it.
Without definate evidence wouldnt risk feeding it to any af the livestock.

Going back to my childhood my ma used to give me brewers yeast tablets, for vitamin b i think.
BREWERS YEAST...its just dawned on me...MARMITE!!!!! Anyone know how to make it..PLEEAASSEE!!!!! 4 addicts live in our house, me, OH, dog and cat.

Bramble..isnt that biodiesal? As theyre planning to build a new nuclear power station about 2 miles from here I was planning to run on fallout instead

[Bramble-Poultry]

i used to live near Berkeley Power station in gloucestershire. its an old decommissioned nuclear station who's claim to fame is being used as a set for "Blakes 7".

strange town that, Berkeley, famous for killing a monarch with a red hot poker up the jacksy, dragging his body through Gloucester and the nuclear power station!

still, living near the nuclear power station never did me or my other head any harm. Plus i can scratch my third arm with one of my 2 left feet.

seriously, when will people ever learn that when politicians talk about nukes being cheaper than wind to install, they never include the decommissioning costs into the nukes? go wind power is all i can say!

[Hilary B]

Biodiesel is made from OSR (also known as "yellow Peril", the growing crop causes headaches in some people) There are some plans for making alcohol-based fuel, but so far the 'potential fuel energy' is only about 15% of the energy in the crop, the rest being used up by the production process. They are considering ways to make use of the 'straw' (and other unwanted parts of the plant) instead....
I know that part of the process of turning yeast into Marmite involves extracting the flavour with salt (similar to the way you can extract the flavour of fruit by covering it with sugar), but I suspect it is a LOT more complicated than that!
Cattle can feed on the fibrous remains in 'brewer's grains', but I doubt it would have much food value for chickens.
Spent hops I don't think are any use except as mulch.

[MaureenHall]

go wind power is all i can say!

Which brings us right back to the possible internal fermentation

[Bramble-Poultry]

Ethanol is already a constituant of petrol - its cut with it to make it go further in much the same way that people with diesel cars are already driving in biodiesel and not knowing it as diesel is cut with this also. The majority of ethanol used in this country is from sugar beet, its not an effcient method of extracting ethanol but it uses and already waste product anyway so I suppose it doesn't need to be!

OSR is a blinking weed, great legume though, running a diesel car on veg oil is really easy, you just need to remove the glycerine.

As for wind power - go for it, lets see if Stafford council approve the Turbine thats currently out to public consultation - but as all of the people are wineing about property prices in the area I fear not!

[its hilly]

OSR makes me have asthma attacks when its in flower on sunny days. Thank goodness they dont grow it up here.

Bramble

still, living near the nuclear power station never did me or my other head any harm. Plus i can scratch my third arm with one of my 2 left feet.

ROFL, I've lived close to Sellafield for most of my life..maybe that explains things

Only trouble with wind power is that they always want to stick the turbines in the middle of a glorious view, if they shoved em down the center of motorways and got more power out of them Id say wooppee.

Didnt call today, too busy..OH says if I dont get time before w/e he'll EXTREAMLY reluctantly FORCE himself to go to the pub with the brewery attatched. Just for me of course