BREWING up a fresh and different approach to beer is the goal of a Woking company hoping for the taste of success at the CREST21 Business Awards.

The Good Living Brew Company have entered the Transforming Food category with their product Binary Botanical, billed as “a beer for wine lovers”, with sustainability at its core.

“Good Living Brew Co is a brewing and fermenting company. Our philosophy is to live lighter – to eat and drink lighter, to prioritise light moments with friends and family and to tread lightly minimising our impact on the planet,” said the company’s Danielle Bekker.

“Binary Botanical is brewed to be a refreshing, better-for-you alternative to a glass of wine for those not so keen on the hoppy taste of traditional beer. By using the leaf part of the plant, normally discarded during the brewing process, the Good Living Brew crew team have created a tangy, almost Prosecco-like, low-calorie alternative to wine.

“Binary Botanical is the first of its kind to commercialise the use of hop leaves, a product that otherwise goes to waste, creating innovation within the brewing industry.”

What was a waste product is now a key ingredient. The beer is available as a 4% for those looking for something less alcoholic than a glass of wine, and as a 0.5% alcohol for consumers choosing to drink less or not at all. Both variants are vegan and gluten free.

Danielle said sales during the pandemic have continued to grow steadily, with a 200% growth in online sales.

“The unique taste profile has won several innovation awards for bringing beer to a new audience,” she said. “We recently completed a trial on the Sainsburys Taste of the Future bay and one of the primary reasons for offering us a listing was because we have embedded sustainability into the design of the product rather than an afterthought.”

A process that makes use of the hop leaves can provide a revenue lift of around 15-20% per acre of hops grown, a valuable boost for the tight margins of an organic hop farm. The Good Living Brew team have also been looking at other uses for the hop leaves, from cooking ingredients to a tea extraction, hoping to strengthen the viability for more organic hop farming in this country.

“Good Living Brew Co, through its use of the hop leaf in Binary Botanical, has been able to combine its business objective of moderation in every occasion with the over-arching philosophy of living lighter on the planet,” said Danielle. “Cheers to that.”