Bacon Cheddar Amber Ale Burger

The first time I made spent grain granola was in County Cork, Ireland, three months into a cooking program on a 100-acre working farm. A friend of mine was a brewer from New Zealand, and we spent most of American Thanksgiving homebrewing a dry-hopped pale ale with elderflower in an Irish cottage surrounded by cows. This was my third time homebrewing: the beer wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. What was a standout was the toasty, chewy granola we made from the spent grain, baked with warming spices, dried fruit and dark maple syrup. We ate the granola with yogurt from the Jersey cows nearby, yogurt so fatty and tart the cream stuck to the lid in a cap of pale yellow. That granola was an extension of the first core tenet I learned in cooking and in farming: waste not.