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We turned artisanal bread into craft alcohol that went gold
The need to save bread gave rise to the idea
Bags of unsold bread during the pandemic, both from our Handelek bakery and stores that brought us returns, piled up in the back room.
After we came across an article online about the Austrian bakery Bäckerei Therese Mölk, which has been processing surplus bread into craft alcohol in its own distillery since 2019, we decided to try it out in Poland.
For six months, we meticulously collected and dried bread. We found a distillery in Podkarpacie, where we handed over the raw material to the professional hands of the master of distillation, Grzegorz Pińczuk from Podkarpacka Distillery Okowity.
This is how our krast distillate - dried and crumbled bread - was created. This is also the name it received - OKOWITA KRAST - and this is how we saved the first ton of wholesome bread.
Gold for zero waste craft alcohol from saved bread
In June 2021, we made our debut with this product on the market of strong craft alcohols, presenting Okowita KRAST as a zero waste distillate made entirely from saved bread.
Thanks to a unique mix of high-quality flours and additives as dried fruit, nuts and seeds, our liquor has got a very warm response from the alcohol industry experts and consumers. Expert opinions were unequivocally positive.
“The taste has a lot of pleasant sweetness, milkiness, wafer, but has also a more bitter, nutty note and yeast. In the finish you can taste nuts, especially pistachios, as well as salt and pepper” - Łukasz Gołębiewski, Spirits.com.pl
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“The drink smells like wholemeal bread with additions of cranberries, grain, hay and fruit, mainly plums. The taste is quite bitter, Okowita is bitter-sour, and creamy-milky, with notes of nuts. Long warming finish with a taste of nuts, wholemeal bread, salt and pepper. - Marcin Młodożeniec, 40procent.pl
"A phenomenal product. Complex, surprising. Definitely one of the most interesting spirits I drank.” - Vodka Lover - Vodka tasting
The biggest surprise for us and, at the same time, confirmation of the rightness of the path we chose, came in October during the IV Warsaw Spirits Competition 2021. Our craft liquor received double gold, winning in the category "Strong craft spirits of grain origin".
A chance to be rescued
In addition to the taste qualities that real bread brings to alcohol, it’s very important that it also has very high yield during distillation. This means that significant amounts of bread can be saved. We can proudly say that in each 0.5 l bottle of our distillate, there are three full loaves of saved bread. Such alcohol has a smaller carbon footprint than similar products, not only because the process of its creation is devoid of the essential component - the production of the raw material itself. Another of its merits is counteracting the emission of methane and other greenhouse gases generated in the process of utilizing bakery waste.
This is definitely one of the right paths to save unsold bread and the beginning of the road to further search for the use of this valuable raw material.
