By Rachel Thompson from Mashable

Britain is a crumpet-loving nation. So much so that one bakery brand has found a way to make beer out of waste crumpets. 

Bakery brand Warburtons has created an IPA brewed with leftover ‘wonky’ crumpets — waste food that hasn’t quite made the cut. 

In case you’re unfamiliar with the incomparable delight that is the humble crumpet, allow me to wax lyrical for one moment. First of all, a crumpet is NOT the same as an English muffin. Nor is it a pancake. A crumpet is a type of griddle cake made with yeast. Its crowning glory is its distinctive cratered appearance — its surface it dotted with scores of holes. 

Not all crumpets are created equal — some end up a little misshapen or ‘wonky’ in the baking process. Warburtons teamed up with craft brewery Toast Ale to covert its surplus crumpets into a session IPA. Its name is “The Toasted Crumpet” and it has an alcohol content of 4.2 percent. The IPA is made by replacing the malted barley in the beer with crumpets. 

If you’re expecting the odd bit of buttered crumpet bobbing in your bottle of beer, disabuse yourself of that idea straight away. In a press release, Warburtons explained that Toast Ale made the light IPA by replacing “some of the malted barley in the beer with crumpets, extracting starches and sugars and breaking them down into fermentable sugars — meaning the crumpet does more than just flavour the beer.” 

Warburtons said in a statement that this product comes as the company tries to find innovative ways to make products from its leftover food waste. Darren Littler, head of product innovation at Warburtons, said in a statement that the project was “an innovative way of utilising our ‘wonky’ products whilst celebrating the nation’s love of crumpets in a whole new way.”

According to environmental charity Friends of The Earth, we waste about a third of all food  produced for human consumption. And in the UK, we bin over 10 million tonnes of food each year. It takes a great deal of fresh water, land, and labour to produce food. In fact, according to the 2019 IPCC report, 25-30 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions are attributable to the food system.

You can buy the Warburtons x Toast Ale Crumpet Beer on the Toast Ale website for £28 for 12 300ml bottles available. The collaboration will begin on a limited edition basis, but could be rolled out on a larger scale if there’s demand for it. 

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