Name: How beer is used to make alternative leather | BBC News
Uploaded: 2024-06-06T21:01:20.000Z
Duration: 4 min 38 s
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At Kernal Brewery in London's Bermondsey, something unusual is brewing.

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This grain left over from beer production is commonly used for animal feed or can even end up in landfill.

But here, it's getting a new lease of life.

It's going to be transformed into a leather alternative known as New Grain.

And now it's time for all of this to head back to Arda Biomaterials' lab around the corner.

Once these sacks arrive at the lab, it's time for the process to begin.

First of all, it's emptied out into a container like this.

That's stirred for about an hour to extract the protein from the grain.

Then the husk will be separated and the protein liquid will move along to the next stage where some natural ingredients will be added.

This will be stirred for another couple of hours.

And at this point, protein strings start to develop.

And that means that it's ready to be poured into the trays.

Now, this tray here has got a pretty smooth finish.

So that'll create something that looks like a lot of natural leathers.

If you want something even smoother than that, well, there's a tray for that too.

And for something that's a bit more of a crocodile look, well, you've even got a version like that.

Varying the beer that the grain comes from by, say, using stout, will result in different final colours.

After the material's been sitting in the tray for a day, it's ready to peel off.

Yeah, no, it's completely shiny because it's unbacked.

And now that just needs its sustainable backing added.

One of the big environmental issues with leather production is actually the tanning process, though.

We are exploring using natural colouring agents.

So there's actually a lot of deep tradition in old tanning before the advent of petrochemicals or chromium tanning.

So we're exploring these old dyes that are naturally derived and work with the environment and biodegrade.

And now for a look at some of the finished product.

It looks very much like leather. This one's quite soft.

It's external companies that do that because that's not actually done here.

This is a bit harder, a bit more like a leather that maybe you'd have on a sofa.

Now, if I smell it, because I know that is the instinct with leather...

A bit like a new car, maybe, which I guess could be the smell of leather.

But they are looking at being able to customise it to smell however somebody might want it to.

These two are made from different types of beer, so the colour is authentic.

They do feel less like leather to me, I think because they're harder and more solid.

The more flexible ones that are used for something like a handbag feel more like leather and they've just got that movement to them.

On a big sheet here, this could make a bag that would actually fit my laptop, that feels a lot softer, it moves around more like leather does.

But I think the main point is there's a lot of flexibility as to how the finish is going to end up looking and what can be done to it afterwards.

There are lots of other leather alternatives that are coming online and they each have different positives and negatives.

Do you think it's going to be cheaper than leather?-  Yes.

Well, currently, a lot of the breweries we work with at the moment give away their grain for free.

So our feedstock is coming in at an extremely low value.

Some of the bigger breweries sell it, but it's quite low.

So at scale, we calculate that we can undercut leather and plastic leather.

And when do you think I'm going to be able to go out and buy a handbag made out of this?

It'll start as a small collection to certain clients and then into luxury, and then slowly moving down the luxury market into more commodity and high street.

And what's worth having if there isn't a queue or a waiting list?