Farmall Cub

With all the talk of Ethanol I wonder about the resulting Brewers Grains. Are they good animal feed? How much of the original feed value is left? I know my friend Al Cobb fed them at one time but he has passed to his reward so I can't ask him.

I think that is what happens with the spent grain after the brewing process. Most of it goes to hog feed or animal feed. It is fairly high in protein since most of the "carbohydrate" has been spent on growing Yeast cultures and conversion to alcohol. There are a couple of references I have seen online about selling or "donating" the spend mash to animal (mostly hog and Dairy/Beef) farmers...

Mike in La Crosse, WI

Once the alcohol/ethanol is extracted the residue - brewers grain is sold to local famers. The residue is mixed with other animal type feed stocks and fed to livestock.

Ethanol production - corn utilization has only accounted for about 1.5% of the incease in the price of food at the grocery store.

There are a lot of very biased opinions featured on TV about ethanol production - for and against. As I see the problem - neither side tells the whole story. Each side will present some high statistic bolstering their argument - but convientently leaves out the other side. Example: An ethanol plant uses ?? milion gallons of water a day - leaving people to believe that the water is just gone - then discussing water shortages. They leave out the fact that just about all of the water is recycled.

Thanks. I figured there is some residual good to it.

The by product, DDGS contains about 30% protein and 10% fat. Yield is about 17 lbs per bushel of corn. Cattle love it!

Carbon dioxide is the third product resulting from ethanol production. Carbon dioxide is captured and sold. The product precentage given was 1/3 ethanol, 1/3 brewers grain and 1/3 carbon dioxide. A factoid from an interesting interview on "Missouri Ag Today", a PBS program on corn and ethanol production.

According to the interview, the only thing that excapes the ethanol plant is a bit of water vapor. Everything else is either sold or recycled within the plant.