Toast x Windsor & Eton Brewery

We’ve partnered with Windsor & Eton Brewery to bring you a super fresh collaboration. It’s a 4.5% Pale Ale aptly named ‘Toast and Marmalade’ because surplus bread, orange pulp and citrusy Admiral hops are included in the recipe.

Windsor & Eton are one of the leading brewers in the UK, a founding member of the London Brewers’ Alliance. Along with their Uprising beers, Windsor & Eton have won nearly 70 major international, national, regional and local awards for their cask and keg beers. The brewery is at the heart of the local community in Windsor, and this collab connects it with local bakers and charities to catalyse change … over a beer. 

All profits from the Toast and Marmalade beer will go to Plastic Free Windsor, a community group that’s part of the charity Surfers Against Sewage. The volunteer run charity seeks to encourage individuals, schools and businesses to take steps to eradicate single-use plastic from their daily lives.

We brewed Toast and Marmalade on 29th Jan. We used 200 surplus loaves from Waitrose and their supplier Celtic Bakers, an artisan wholesale bakery in London that is part of the Real Bread Campaign. A team of us spent an hour crumbing the bread before it was combined with local malts and went into the mash tun at 11am.

We sourced surplus orange from our friends at Rejuce, a cold pressed juice company that saves edible fruit and veg from being thrown away. Oranges, like all other produce, are often rejected for being too big, too small, unsymmetrical or simply because them have come loose from their packaging. We added the orange pulp, a by-product from the Rejuice production process, to the brew with the citrusy hops, and by 7pm the brew was all tucked-up in the fermenter.

Windsor & Eton’s Master Brewer, Paddy Johnson checked on the brew the following morning and sent us an update: “It has just started to ferment with occasional CO2 bubbles being released. Spot on time. The colour of the wort is how I like my toast – sort of a classic Bitter/Light Ale colour. The aroma has definite marmalade character, which we’re very pleased with. So far looking very good. We ended up with 17.5 barrels – good extraction from the grain and bread so well done getting those really small pieces.”

The spent grain at the end of the brew was sent back to the farms for animal feed. It contained very little residual bread, though Paddy assured us that the royal cows would enjoy it and also the remnants of the fruit: “In fact they’ll probably complain when we send ‘normal’ feed next time. Let them eat cake!”.

The brew was dry-hopped on the weekend of the 2nd of February with Admiral hops that further add to the citrus/marmalade character. By the following Monday, the fermentation had completed. Paddy reported that the beer has “retained its distinct orangey tang, with some subtle bread notes, particularly in the aroma”.  Next, Paddy will cool the beer and start to crop the settled yeast in preparation for packaging. We’re excited that the beer is almost ready for drinking!

Toast and Marmalade will be on tap at Craft Beer Rising, the UK’s biggest craft beer festival at the Old Truman Brewery, from 21st to 23rd February 2019. It will then be available in pubs around the capital and the Thames Valley.