What if the leftover waste from brewing your favourite pint could help produce the burgers and steaks of tomorrow? That’s the idea behind a new study from University College London, which has found a creative way to tackle one of the biggest obstacles standing between lab-grown meat and your dinner plate, according to a study published in Frontiers in Nutrition.
Cultivated meat, which is sometimes called lab-grown meat, is produced by growing real animal cells in a controlled environment, rather than raising and slaughtering animals. It’s a concept that has attracted huge interest as a more sustainable alternative to conventional meat production.
The catch is that to grow properly, animal cells need something to cling to, a kind of edible framework called a scaffold. Finding something that is cheap, safe to eat, and actually resembles the texture of real meat has proven surprisingly difficult, and it’s one of the main reasons lab-grown meat hasn’t yet reached supermarket shelves.
When breweries ferment beer, they produce large quantities of leftover yeast that usually just gets thrown away. UCL researchers wondered whether this brewing waste could be put to better use. The team collected spent yeast from the Big Smoke Brewing Company in Surrey and used it to grow a type of bacteria that produces a material called bacterial cellulose, essentially a natural, fibrous structure similar to what gives plants their stiffness.
This cellulose was then tested as a scaffold for growing animal cells. The results were encouraging. “Cultivated meat has the potential to revolutionise food production, but its success depends on overcoming key technical challenges,” said Professor Richard Day, senior author of the study. “While it’s relatively easy to grow animal cells for mass food production you need to be able to grow them on something cheap, edible and that preferably provides a structure that resembles real meat. Our research shows that brewing waste, which is often discarded, can be repurposed to grow bacterial cellulose with properties suitable for meat scaffolding. This could significantly reduce costs and environmental impact.”
Crucially, when the team placed animal cells onto the beer waste-derived scaffold, the cells attached and began to grow, a key proof that the material can do its job.
The scaffolds were put through a “chewing machine” that measures properties like hardness, chewiness and stickiness. Compared to standard bacterial cellulose, the beer waste version was actually closer in texture to real meat, softer and less chewy. “One of the biggest hurdles in cultivated meat is replicating the ‘mouthfeel’ and texture of real meat. Our findings suggest that bacterial cellulose grown on brewing waste not only supports cell growth but also mimics the mechanical properties of meat more closely than other scaffolds,” said Christian Harrison, the study’s lead author and a PhD student at UCL. “This opens up exciting possibilities for scalable, sustainable meat alternatives. In this study we collected a relatively small amount of raw material from one craft brewery, that would otherwise have gone to waste. But huge volumes of brewing waste are generated each year that could have a valuable use.”
The research is still at an early stage. The team now plan to test the scaffold with other cell types found in real meat, like fat and muscle cells, and to experiment with spent yeast from different types of beer. But the early signs are promising and the idea that a pint of beer could one day contribute to a sustainable burger is an appealing one.
Harrison C, Gokoglan E and Day RM (2025) Bacterial cellulose scaffolds derived from brewing waste for cultivated meat applications. Front. Nutr. 12:1656960. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1656960