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There are plenty of ways to repurpose spent grain, but one of the most creative is to use it to make your own bricks. When wet, the spent grain forms a perfect brick that you can use in your garden or as an insulator for your chicken house.
Steps to make beer bricks
- Pick out your grains, place them in a shallow container with lukewarm water, and let them soak for about 30 minutes.
- After soaking, you’ll then need to drain the grains and spread them out on an oven-safe tray lined with parchment paper.
- Use some kind of weight – like a plate or a can of beans or food – to press down on the grains so that they pack together and become dense.
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and then bake the brick for about two hours until it becomes hard enough that it won’t crumble easily when you try and break it apart.
- You don’t need any fancy equipment for this process as all you really need is parchment paper, an oven-safe tray, and some water.
- You can also experiment with different types of grains as well as different ratios (1 part spent grain to 2 parts water) depending on how stiff you want your final product to be.
- And while not everyone has an oven at home these days, many people do have access to community spaces where they can pop in their used spent grain brick instead of throwing it away. Or if you have an outdoor fire pit, this might work as well.
