Each year at the Kilt Chaser Festival, we invite our friends and family to join us and celebrate all things Arizona — the Kilt Chaser 5K, live bands from all over the 48th state, delicious BBQ, and local food trucks. This year, we even invited over a dozen of our closest brewery friends to send some of their beer to celebrate with us!
Each year we also welcome our furry friends to come and hang out with us too. Our volume of spent grain combined with our unquenchable thirst to extend our hospitality to each of our guests whenever possible lead a couple of members of our team to develop a recipe for special dog treats using spent grain from our brewing process.
I sat down to ask Trevor Schultz, a long-time team member of Four Peaks, to talk about his creation. He was gracious enough to share the grainy details, including the recipe, for our fans.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for ‘Fur Treats’?
T: We wanted to do something fun for the first festival at [Four Peaks Tasting Room on] Wilson. At the time, Erin and I just started making treats for fun for our pup, Lil Ginger.
We found out you could use spent grain from the brewing process via Google and Pinterest. Erin definitely did her homework. Over the years, our recipe has evolved.
Q: How fun! Love that making these treats became a family project. Can you walk us through the process?
T: The day starts out early as I head to Four Peaks [in Tempe] to get the spent grain from the first brew of the day (Kilt Lifter this year). I then get home, and we start cooking. Or baking. Or whatever.
Our recipe and what our oven can handle at one time is
4 cups of spent grain
2 cups of whole grain flour
2 eggs
1 cup of peanut butter (make sure you get puppy friendly peanut butter)
1 tablespoon of honey
A few dashes of parsley for their breath.
We then mix it in our mixer and beat it until it has a nice consistency. Erin then rolls it out evenly and cut out tiny bones. We then bake it in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes. We take them out and then turn the oven down to 225 and then bake again for another hour to help make sure they dry out.
After that, we let them sit on the racks [to cool] and then bag them. You want to make sure to keep them in an airtight container for up to two weeks.
Q: For this year’s Kilt Chaser Festival, what was the yield?
T: This year we made 450 treats. We filled 200 bags. We also gave them away to our neighbors and their dogs in the hood. Our girls are still happy.
Q: Thanks for the information and the creative inspiration, Trevor! Cheers!
“Spent grain” is the grain that has been used in the brewing process to make beer. At Four Peaks, we take care to use our spent grain in an ecologically sustainable manner. Once the grain has been used, it is given to local farmers as animal feed. Homebrewers may find this recipe useful too!
Catch us on the right day (well, morning — early, early, early morning), and we may have some for you too! You can also contact your local brewery to see if this is an option for them or contact your local Society of Homebrewers and they may be gracious enough to share with you!
Catch us having fun all over the interwebs! We are on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest!
Got an idea for a Four Peaks blog? Let me know at marie@fourpeaks.com!
Marie at Four Peaks 