Forget turning water into wine, a Dunedin distillery is turning bread into botanical spirits.
The Dunedin Craft Distillery was established in 2020.
Jenny McDonald, one of the distillery's founders, says it began with a rant over coffee between friends about the tonnes of bakery products ending up in landfill.
Dunedin Craft Distillery has already saved four tonnes of products going to landfill. (Source: 1News)
"I didn't think too much of it at the time and went away and thought I'm sure you can make alcohol out of bread cause it's full of sugar, and that's really how it started," said McDonald, who now runs the company with teammate Sue Stockwell.
The company has already saved four tonnes of products going to landfill.
Every week the distillery gets a delivery of products from Kiwi Harvest.
"It's not just sliced bread, the good thing when you're distilling, you don't have to be too picky about the nature of the bakery waste so we can deal with everything from raspberry buns, to ciabatta to sliced white, croissants, you name it, it goes in," McDonald said.
"We've started getting local clubs who do their cheese roll fundraisers turning up on the door step you know, can you use our crusts? And it's hilarious and we love it."
The bread is then cut up and mixed with water.
"That's made into a mash, like a brewer's mash," said Stockwell.
Once the sugars are released, the mixture is strained and put into fermenters for a week.
Then yeast is added to start the fermentation process.
"That's where the sugar comes into it and we end up with a light beer."
It's then flavoured and bottled before it's ready to sell.
"No one else in New Zealand's doing it and there's only a few round the world and it's a good way of getting rid of the ridiculous waste of bread," said Stockwell.
With a small distillery and an even smaller team, the pair are struggling to keep up with demand.
But expansions are underway, which Stockwell says will make a huge difference.
"Once we've totally scaled up, we'll be saving about four times what we are now at least and hopefully making a little inroad into the waste of bread in Dunedin and it'll be very nice if it followed right through the country."
There are six products in the range so far, including a Dunedin Dry Gin and a Cacao Vodka.
Despite three loaves of bread or bakery products going into each bottle, the product is gluten free.
All gluten is removed in the distilling process.
The distillery is now looking at what to do next.
"The core of our business is about food waste- so the opportunities for using other food waste streams- I think the sky's the limit," said McDonald.
"Whether it's bakery waste, it might be fruit, basically any food stuff that's got sugar in it is fair game."
The pair hope their business model can inspire others to think outside the box when it comes to food waste.
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