Toast Ale has released the third beer of its Rise Up series, raising awareness of our broken food system and galvanising action to fix it for people and the planet.
Released on National Toast Day (Thursday, 25th February) during Real Bread Week, Baker’s Witbier is a 5% Belgian-style spiced wheat beer with subtle notes of orange and coriander. As is Toast’s signature style, the beer was brewed with surplus fresh bread to prevent food waste and reduce the environmental footprint of the beer.
This limited-edition brew used organic loaves from Hobbs House Bakery, a Real Bread Campaign supporter committed to baking without hidden processing aids or other additives.
The beer’s label carries this important message about our river systems:
“Industrial food production is polluting our rivers, which create coastal dead zones as they enter the ocean. But one-third of food is wasted. By reducing food waste, and supporting farming practices that use less chemical fertilisers, we can protect freshwater sources.”
All profits will go to the environmental charity Feedback, to support campaigning work on food systems ahead of COP26, the UN climate change conference being held in Glasgow later this year.
Toast’s Rise Up campaign is also encouraging drinkers to ask their MPs to be advocates for climate and nature, and ensure the food system is taken into account in environmental policy (there’s an easy-to-use form at toastale.com/riseup).
Toast’s co-founder and chief operating officer, Louisa Ziane, said: “We want to celebrate positive action we can all take, including not wasting food, eating a more plant-based diet, and supporting more responsible business models like B Corp.
“But we need ambitious, sustained action by policy makers, businesses, and citizens to deliver transformational, systemic change. We need legally-binding targets and progressive environmental protection policies that will force all businesses to act and create an incentive for ecological renewal.”
In the lead up to COP26, Toast is releasing a series of limited-edition beers with fellow B Corps Divine Chocolate, teapigs, Hobbs House Bakery, Oddbox, Rebel Kitchen, Rubies in the Rubble, and Cafedirect. Each beer will highlight an element of the ecological crisis, and the change needed to the food system to meet the goals set in the Paris Agreement at COP21.
The beers will be available at toastale.com from From Thursday, 25th February, at independent retailers, and on draught at Waitrose Unpacked stores.
