Welcome to our fermentation factory! Brainchild of team Silo including Head of Fermentation Ryan Walker, and supported by Crate business infrastructure and 100 crowdfund pledges. It’s soon to be a hive of microbial activity, creating macro waves on the food waste frontier. 

The output? So far, CRATE’s delicious Amazake and Gooseberry Sour. Using koji to produce amazake - a sweet, low alcohol fermented rice elixir - and adding it to the gooseberry sour beer brew really rounds out the sharpness, creating a subtle and more full drinking experience. 

In the coming days and weeks, production will ramp up to industrial scales. Koji is the prize, and though you might not be familiar with it, its uses are commonplace in home kitchens. It’s the slam dunk flavour facilitator behind many Japanese products: mirin, soy sauce, sake, miso to name a few. In the factory, it will be grown on spent brewers grains, bakery excess and more - creating treasure out of trash, and saving said ‘trash’ from entering food waste management streams in the process. The cherry on top? You won’t find flavour like it.

That’s not just our opinion, it’s science. The umami that comes from fermentation fires off our flavour receptors in the most saliva inducing ways, much more than other combinations of flavour compounds found in food. 

To begin with, the factory is producing Koji (made from local grains), Miso (made from spent grains - a criminally under-utilised wonder ingredient, it’s prefermented, low sugar and contains all the right fatty acids!), and Soy (made from spent bread and british legumes). 

The fermentation factory is already the biggest artisan koji production facility in the UK, if not Europe (we think!), capable of producing up to 3 tonnes per week in the space.

So who is the customer? As a B2B enterprise, the factory is predominantly focussing on selling to restaurants (at least to begin with!). Restaurant kitchens are a hub for innovation - similarly to the coffee industry which looks to the world barista championships - the food industry looks to restaurants. Food tech companies and the textile industry have both emerged as important and exciting customers, too. 

As the project evolves, plans are for it to look directly at food waste streams, as well as other food businesses. The goal is to open up new potential for a lot of interesting products and new product development opportunities - think kitchens and breweries like Silo and Crate, and even the health food industry. The factory is currently in its pilot stage to better understand the real potential of the project. How it is scaled, in a meaningful, sustainable way and with integrity is what will determine the impact. 

In the short term, the factory is creating accessibility to koji. And Koji changes how we approach the issue of food waste, which many restaurants face. According to Head of Fermentation Ryan Walker, koji enables a restaurant like Silo to go from 10% to 1% food waste. The production of koji is, however, difficult for most restaurants, let alone at scale. To buy it in the necessary quantities is not justifiable for many hospitality companies, many of whom are facing notoriously thin margins. “That’s the problem we’re solving” says Walker. “The education opportunity, combined with accessibility of our koji will set commercial kitchens up to see a reduction in food waste, and increased profit as a result. The financial benefit and huge sustainability benefit makes it a win-win.” 

Want to get a taste of it? Book a table at Silo, where each course is touched with a drop, a process or an upcycled excess ingredient, showcasing the flavour potential of this project - it’s our showroom. You can also look forward to a limited edition fermentation-featuring pizza coming to Crate in the coming weeks! The Amazake and Gooseberry Sour (3.5%) is pouring now in Crate and Silo.