Today I delivered half a loaf of “multi-grain” bread to Benjamin Vineyards.  One of its ingredients was flour made from their grape seeds.

I have been running out there a lot lately.  Learning about grapes.

Grape seeds appear to be an annoying co-product of the grape harvest.  While they represent only 1-2% of the grape, they attract pests to the compost, which bring on larger predators, which makes them simply aggravating.

In my jerry-rigged crush plant in the hallway of building 3 we figured out how to crush grape seeds.  Exquisite oil.  And meal that looks like purple cigars.

I roasted some pumpkin seeds in the oil.  It was marvelous.  And I ran some oil back to Benjamin Vineyards.

Last weekend I pulverized the grape meal under a towel with a sledge hammer at Summer Shop, and fed the remains into a flour mill I borrowed from Farmer Doug.

I ended up with seven cups of “flour.”  More like corn meal, or perhaps sand.  And I distributed them around the neighborhood.

Arlo was the first to use it.  He cut 1 cup of grape seed flour into 3 cups of all purpose flour for a batch of chocolate chip cookies.  They were great.  May be not his best batch.  Since they had sort of a sand finish.

Camille took a run at it with Focaccia.  Better.  But still a tough sandy component.

Then Lynette stepped in.  You could say that’s not fair, since she is trained as a baker.  But she dropped off a multi-grain bread using grape seed flour that was to die for.  Unbelievable.  I had to run some out to the vineyard right away.

So where are we on the grape?

Most of it is pressed for juice.  We have figured out how to crush the seeds for oil and how to turn the meal into flour for high end human consumption.

Now all that remains are the skins.

One of the things we have learned to do at Piedmont Biofuels is account for every ounce.  There was a time when we would buy a pound of fat, spin it into fuel, and throw twenty percent away.  These days we have our bio-refinery spinning such that we are able to bring in a pound of fat, spin it into fuel, and recover cash for every left over ounce of product.

Just as we need to profit from every ounce, it would seem the wine industry should do the same.  I’m not sure how much of the grape is lost to the skin, but the trick is to convert all of that into useable product.

And I believe that might be what sustainability looks like.  Using every bit of waste.  Or having no waste whatsoever.

Piedmont is still finding its way.  We are on the ropes, but still in the fight.  For me to be out dipsy doodling with grapes might appear to some as Nero fiddling while Rome burns.

But it is much more than that.

Crushing begets feedstock.  Imagine a biodiesel plant running out of feedstock (fat) while America is in the midst of an obesity epidemic.  Too bad we can’t pay our faithful employees with irony.

I don’t think Piedmont is out of tricks.  And when I sink my teeth into some of Lynette’s multi-grain bread made with locally milled grape seed flour, I am inspired to push on…

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 22nd, 2009 at 10:36 pm and is filed under Energy Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.