OME Brew

Concept Beer

Louise Mackenzie, Greg Young, John Allan

Beer analysis by Brewlab Sunderland

OME Brew reuses household waste to create beer with the help of bacteria that feed on waste-paper. Combining biotechnology with ritual, and science with news stories, OME Brew is a (surprisingly) quaffable concept beer washed clean of inflated promises claimed through biotechnology headlines. The project highlights the potential for community household waste fermentation practices.

What if the microbes in our homes could use our household waste to generate medicines, flavourings, fuels, or even beer?

OME Brew originated from conversations between artist Louise Mackenzie and biotechnology researcher John Allen on the potential for converting household waste to new products through naturally occurring microbial processes. Introducing the concept of the Tiny Urban Bioreactor, Allen's research challenges the logic of substitution (Rudge and Ehrenstein 2023) inherent in large-scale microbial green energy production to ask, what forms of biotechnology might be possible in the community or within the home.

OME Brew became a way to share knowledge on commercially driven biotechnology and DIY biotech in the community

...over a pint.

OME Brew, Tendrils exhibition, The OME, 2023

Headlines, Hype, Protocol and Practice

Artist Louise Mackenzie and HBBE scientists, John Allan and Greg Young ran a series of public workshops in association with The NewBridge Project to collectively question the rites and rights of brewing concoctions with biotechnological bodies, leading to the launch of our first OME Brew concept beer: Mother of Life.

Through public workshops, we shared the process of brewing beer with the aid of bacteria that live on waste-paper, discussed the values and complexities of standardising working methods (from the ancient traditions of the ale wives, to home or kitchen practices, to laboratory protocols), worked together on making a collective ritual from our biotech hopes and fears and used recycled materials to design eco-friendly labels for our biotech hype OME Brew.

Rituals and Rites

In Scottish folklore, to forspeak is to extravagantly commend a good property (e.g. “what a clever bairn”), which is considered peculiarly unlucky. To cure the forespoken individual, they are washed in water to great ceremony in a saining ritual. Saining is a Scots word meaning blessing, and is often used as a protective charm that involves drinking blessed water from a river crossed by both the living and the dead.

OME Brew adapts this ancient Scottish tradition to bless the microbes that live upon on our human waste (in this case, waste-paper) by washing them in a water and hops mix, to make beer. We are blessing the microbes and, in drinking the beer, blessing ourselves against forspeaking our biotechnological prowess.