Like water into wine, two Dunedin women are turning bread into gin.
Their company Dunedin Craft Distillers is the only New Zealand producer of botanical spirits made with surplus bread and bakery products.
Jenny McDonald (left) and Sue Stockwell - founders of Dunedin Craft Distillers Photo: Dunedin Craft Distillers / Facebook
Since 2020, Jenny McDonald and Sue Stockwell have diverted over four tonnes of sliced bread, croissants, raspberry buns, and doughnuts from the landfill.
Jenny says she was taken aback to learn of the enormous quantities of bread and bakery products that end up in landfill and started pondering what could they could be used for.
"I thought 'if bread is full of starch and carbohydrates you ought to be able to turn that into alcohol - that's where it started," she tells Kathryn Ryan.
"And we all liked gin," adds Sue.
Photo: Supplied / Sophie Merkens
Jenny and Sue hadn't produced alcohol and learnt as they went along.
The bread products, sourced from the food waste charity KiwiHarvest, are delivered to Jenny and Sue three times a week. It takes around three weeks from the time they arrive to craft them into flavoured spirits.
First, Jenny and Sue use the bread products as a carbohydrate source to brew into a light distiller's beer, which they then distil and carbon-filter to produce a unique bread-based alcohol that's then further distilled with flavours.
The base spirit made from bread has a "slightly brioche vanilla flavour" that's surprisingly consistent even with the variety of dough products used, Jenny says.
The water used in Dunedin Craft Distillers' gin and vodka is rainwater collected from a private property on Mount Cargill that they then filtered and UV-treat.
Dunedin Craft Distillers currently produce a Dry Dunedin Gin, the award-winning Cacao Vodka (a clear spirit with dark chocolate notes) and a Wild Dunedin Gin made with local littleneck clams, lemon and wild fennel. They have a small shop and offer tastings at their Robert Street premises and will soon offer tours.
