Amazon-backed Circular Grain turns brewer’s waste into high-protein milk alternative

Food tech company Circular Grain is set to launch Tremi — a nutrient-rich milk alternative made using spent brewer’s grain, a byproduct of beer production often used as animal feed. The innovation will feature alongside nine others at this year’s Amazon Sustainability Accelerator program. The program is focused on upcycling waste products from various industries into new everyday products.

Circular Grain’s solution adds to the growing dairy substitutes category. Milk alternatives are the fastest-growing subcategory, as consumers increasingly choose them for their perceived health benefits. From April 2021 to March 2026, high-protein dairy alternative product launches grew by 5% globally, according to Innova Market Insights.

Circular Grain’s founders say that Tremi contains “three times more protein and six times less sugar than conventional oat milk.” It also reduces manufacturers’ dependency on new farmland or imported ingredients.

“There’s a lot of talk about climate change and sustainability, but comparatively little action. For me, Circular Grain was an opportunity to translate scientific findings into a concrete solution and thus make a measurable contribution,” says Marina Hijano Moreno, CTO and co-founder of Circular Grain.

The launch of its nutritious milk substitute is slated for September this year. Initially, the Tremi Original and Tremi Barista varieties will be available in the greater Munich area (Germany) in cafés, retailers, and tasting events.

Circularity drives milk alternatives

Milk substitutes are needed to diversify the dairy aisle with products that can meet demand for plant-based, reduced-sugar, high-protein, and more resource-efficient options.

Nathalie Stellwag, Marina Hijano Moreno, and Denise Ilogu founded Circular Grain to turn brewer’s spent grain into a nutritious food ingredient.Circular Grain’s Tremi adds a circular economy angle by using the brewer’s spent grain instead of relying on newly grown crops or imported raw materials.

It utilizes an existing raw material stream to follow a circular approach to food production. The milk substitute leaves a “potentially smaller carbon footprint,” notes the company.

“We need to make better use of the resources we have, and we are unlocking breweries as our starting point for a real circular food system,” says Moreno.

“With Tremi, we’re transforming spent grain from brewers — which has seen little use in human food so far — into a highly nutritious milk alternative.”

Amazon Sustainability Accelerator

Nathalie Stellwag, Marina Hijano Moreno, and Denise Ilogu founded Circular Grain as a student project at the Technical University of Munich. Their aim was to make the valuable nutrients in spent grain available for human consumption.

This was followed by product tastings with 1,500 participants and over 250 iterations over the past two years. The company also secured over €500,000 (US$571,000) in funding through grants and angel investments.

Tremi Barista milk substitute contains 15 g of protein, calcium, B12, B2 and D3, and no sugar (Image credit: Circular Grain).The company is participating in this year’s Amazon Sustainability Accelerator in 2026 alongside Wasted ApS (Copenhagen, Denmark), which upcycles surplus bread to develop pasta, BRØL (Copenhagen, Denmark), which transforms wheat bran into beer, and Coffee Based (Gorinchem, Netherlands), which turns coffee waste into reusable cups.

The initiative supports young companies in establishing more sustainable products and offers them technical support to scale their businesses with Amazon’s guidance.

“Whether it’s bread, coffee grounds, or grain, each of these companies creates a new product from waste materials. Waste is seen not as a problem, but as a resource. This shift in perspective excites us,” says Xavier Flamand, responsible for Amazon’s selling partners in Europe.