Brewers yeast is often thrown away: but could create the answer to better cultivated meat products, according to scientists from UCL London. And what’s more, it could also be a more sustainable and cost-effective method.
The key could be bacterial cellulose grown from yeast left over from brewing beer.
The cultivated meat headache
While the area holds plenty of potential, cultivated meat has been held back by several challenges.
At the heart of the problem is that its difficult to obtain parity with conventional meat: and alternative proteins have failed to gain widespread acceptance.
Part of the problem has been the difficulty in creating the complex hierarchical structure of animal tissues that produce the taste and texture of meat.
Without this structure, products fail to have the texture that consumers are looking for.
And there’s another challenge: any such ‘scaffold’ materials must be cheap, biocompatible, safe for consumption and malleable (to allow it to be shaped into suitably sized and visually appealing products for consumers).
From waste product into sturdy scaffold?
Brewers spent yeast is a by-product of beer fermentation that is often thrown away.
Global beer production stands at some 1.9 billion hectolitres a year. Per hectolitre of beer, around 20kg of brewers spent grain and 300g of brewers spent yeast is generated.
Some brewing waste is used as animal food or in food additives, but much is discarded.
However, this brewing waste could be repurposed into bacterial cellulose for such ‘scaffolding’ in cultivated meat products.
Researchers from UCL collected spent yeast from the Big Smoke Brewing Company in Surrey, England, and used it to culture Komagataeibacter xylinus, a bacterium known for producing high-quality cellulose.
Not only did the resulting substance stand up to tests for its structural properties – it was actually closer in texture to natural meat products, with ‘lower hardness and chewiness’ than the cellulose currently used.
“If cultivated meat is to displace conventional meat products, alternative proteins must be competitive on price, texture, taste, nutrition and convenience as well as safe,” write the researchers in the study.
“Our approach offers a cost-effective and sustainable strategy to improve the scalability of cultivated meat, contributing to future sustainable food production.”
The research was supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).
Source: Bacterial cellulose scaffolds derived from brewing waste for cultivated meat applications; Frontiers, Volume 12 - 2025 |https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2025.1656960
