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Micro-brewers appreciate the experience of developing a brew by hand in the same way that hand papermakers enjoy creating their own paper. In fact, craft beer makers are an excellent foil to hand papermakers, especially when it comes to the relevance of fiber selection.
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For brewers and papermakers alike, the final product tells the story of where it has been sourced. Paper that is manufactured on the industrial scale has a certain homogeneity and predictability. The song is the same for beer. When a product is made by hand from local resources, the product has characteristics that are more unique and palatable to its community.
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As the United States of America develops its own cultural distinctions, Peace Paper establishes links between mindful artisans and their paper source.
In order to realize the relationship between craft beer making and hand papermaking, Peace Paper collaborates with microbreweries in the creation of paper made from brewers' spent grain.
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In 2014, we collaborated with seven new breweries in order to promote their handmade efforts and dedication to their locality. All of the breweries are located within a seventy-mile radius of each other in New York State, and each one has a unique vision and mission for its role in the community.
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After visiting each brewery and exposing its staff to the history of hand papermaking and its contemporary applications of the art form, we collect spent grain (barley, hops, etc.) left over from the beer-making process and use it to create paper with the beer-makers themselves.
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In addition, our collaborators select articles of clothing that he or she wears while making beer, to be pulped with the spent grain to add strength to the paper as well as personality.
We keep in mind the positive economic and cultural impact that microbreweries have on their communities. In sharing our craft process with them, we offer an alternative method for disposing of waste created during the brewing process.
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While most microbreweries give their spent grain to pig farmers, there is actually a limit to the amount of spent grain that pigs can consume. When it comes to papermaking, one five-gallon bucket of grain makes up to fifty sheets of paper.
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So when the pigs are stuffed, that extra bucket or two of spent grain can grant brewers a solid card-stock for printed materials, including labels, menus, post-cards, and signage.
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When brewers add to that equation an old T-shirt that they wore when brewing their signature beer recipe, the amount of cellulose for papermaking is extended and they find themselves producing stacks of handmade brew paper in addition to specialty bottles and growlers.
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Spent grain paper is an exciting undertaking. Every batch of brew paper is as distinct as its brewer, and we look forward to the fun of helping microbreweries create marketing materials that reflect, quite literally, their own recipes for locally sourced products.
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In 2022, Master Papermaker Izhar Neumann made paper from spent grain to be used as packaging material for a local brewery.
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