CITIZEN

With millions of loaves thrown out every year in New Zealand, bread is one of our most wasteful food products. Similarly, despite boasting one of the highest numbers of breweries per head of capita in the world, very little brew mash is re-used or re-purposed. Enter Donald Shepherd and the team at Citizen Collective. With a vision for sustainability, they saw these twin issues of waste with bread and beer and found an elegant, tasty solution. Bread that would otherwise be wasted is sourced, and sent to the brewing team at Sawmill in Matakana. Once there it replaces 25% of the malt in a brew, before being fermented and canned in the growing range of Citizen beers. The loop is closed afterwards, with leftover mash converted back into flour and making up 15% of each loaf of Citizen Sourdough. Efficient, sustainable and with an eye towards carbon neutrality by 2022, old bread has never been as delicious as Citizen Collective have made it.