Dunedin Craft Distillers' has been transforming bread waste into award-winning gin since 2020.

Now the company is looking to speed up production with the goal of processing up to a third of Dunedin's total bakery waste each year.

To do this they'll need a bigger mash kettle. 

Dunedin Craft Distillers’ co-founders Jenny McDonald and Sue Stockwell talk to the Herald about how they are upcycling bread waste into award-winning premium spirits, and how they plan on expanding their output.

Over the last few years, since the Covid lockdowns to be honest there has been a steady increase in the number of people attempting to distil their own spirits, in particular gin. One important ingredient is ethanol, alcohol, and two Dunedin distillers are making their own ethanol from one core ingredient bread. Jendy Harper met the two women turning leftover loaves into an award wining tipple.

A Dunedin distillery is celebrating having diverted a total of 10 tonnes of bread and bakery waste from landfill to make its spirits since opening.

But it is now hoping it can top this three-year effort within the span of just a year.

Dunedin Craft Distillers — the brewers behind Dunedin Dry Gin, Bay Gin and Cacao Vodka — celebrated the milestone at its Roberts St distillery yesterday by bestowing a dozen commemorative T-shirts to staff, or the "10 Tonne Brewers Club", who had helped stir their way past the 10-tonne total.

A tiny "bread-to-bottle" gin distillery in Dunedin has been selected as New Zealand's only representative culinary travel tip by National Geographic.

Jenny McDonald and Sue Stockwell, of Dunedin Craft Distillers, said they were thrilled to be selected as one of "21 culinary gems worth a trip in 2024".

"We were just shocked," Ms McDonald said.

"We started this back in 2020 off practically a blank sheet of paper and a desire to prevent food waste going to landfill."

On the Bread and Bottle tour, visitors learn how the co-founders turn surplus baked goods — croissants, bagels and even pizza dough — into gin and vodka.

A Dunedin distillery is turning bread into gin, diverting thousands of loaves from landfill a year.

Gin has come a long way since the 18th century, when the English artist William Hogarth illustrated the evils of gin-drinking in Gin Lane, a vivid print that shows the crazed spectacle of a depraved London street, with a mother dropping her baby as she pinches snuff in front of a man and dog gnawing on the same bone. In 1714, an Anglo-Dutch moraliser named Bernard Mandeville scorned gin as an infernal solution, a “fiery lake,” that set a wretch’s brain on fire and scorched his entrails.

The Bay Gin made from waste-bread wins gold medal in London.

Transforming discarded bread to gin: Reducing food waste with Dunedin Craft Distillers. Most spirits distillers are chasing taste. But Jenny McDonald and Sue Stockwell, founders of Dunedin Craft Distillers, arrived at their gin and vodka via a far more oblique route: chasing carbon.

It started over coffee in 2019. A mutual friend was talking about the quantities of bread and bakery products ending up in landfills across New Zealand. When Jenny heard that each loaf of discarded bread costs its own weight in carbon to produce, she did a rough, back-of-an-envelope extrapolation based on Dunedin’s population.

Like water into wine, two Dunedin women are turning bread into gin. Their company Dunedin Craft Distillers is the only New Zealand producer of botanical spirits made with surplus bread and bakery products.

Since 2020, Jenny McDonald and Sue Stockwell have diverted over four tonnes of sliced bread, croissants, raspberry buns, and doughnuts from the landfill.

Created for Dine Dunedin, the clever team at Dunedin Craft Distillers have shared with Style their warming winter take on the classic negroni.

Winter negroni

On the nose, the promise of summer raspberries to come gives way to classic bitters with notes of bay, herbs and orange. Balanced with a hint of caramel sweetness, our winter negroni is a warm and comforting aperitivo.

Forget turning water into wine, a Dunedin distillery is turning bread into botanical spirits.

The Dunedin Craft Distillery was established in 2020. Jenny McDonald, one of the distillery's founders, says it began with a rant over coffee between friends about the tonnes of bakery products ending up in landfill.

"I didn't think too much of it at the time and went away and thought I'm sure you can make alcohol out of bread cause it's full of sugar, and that's really how it started," said McDonald, who now runs the company with teammate Sue Stockwell.

The company has already saved four tonnes of products going to landfill. Every week the distillery gets a delivery of products from Kiwi Harvest.

Gin distillery takes a slice out of food wastage. It is citrussy with raspberry bun notes.

Two Dunedin women — whose only previous knowledge of alcohol was drinking it — have established New Zealand’s first distillery to produce gin and vodka from waste bread and bakery products.

Sue Stockwell, who had a 45-year career in nutrition and food service management, and Jenny McDonald, whose background was in health science, IT and tertiary education, have launched Dunedin Craft Distillers.