Raise a toast

Can a pale ale change the world? Activist and beer maker Louisa Ziane thinks it can

“We wanted to get people talking about food waste and inspire them to live better in their everyday lives,” says Louisa Ziane, who co-founded Toast Ale in 2015 with Tristram Stuart. Food production is one of the world’s main contributors to climate change, yet a third of it is thrown away. In the UK around 24 million slices of bread are wasted every day. “We wanted to create change across a whole industry and promote the benefits of a circular economy,” Louisa explains.

Bread is made from grains such as barley, wheat and rye – the same raw materials used to make beer. Based on the belief that there’s no better way to have a conversation than over a pint, Louisa and Tristram asked themselves whether they could replace some of the grains used in beer-making with surplus bread. They teamed up with a brewery in Hackney, East London. “We needed to make a great-tasting quality beer to get the conversation flowing. We knew if we failed at this then we’d fail at our overall mission,” Louisa says. In the beginning they sourced bread from many small bakeries, but getting a controlled supply was a challenge. Now they work with one big supplier, replacing a third of the barley traditionally used to make beer. “My favourite is our lager – it’s fresh, crisp and has really nice hoppy characteristics to it,” says Louisa.

Since founding Toast, the pair have influenced more breweries to follow their lead, and, through partnerships, they are celebrating the brands fighting for change. “Our Rise Up beers encourage conversation around climate change,” Louisa says. “We teamed up with Tea Pigs to make a lemongrass lager to get people talking about plastic in the oceans. And we partnered with Divine Chocolate to produce a stout to get people talking about deforestation. But the basis for all of this is quality ingredients that create something different and special.”