Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrew Allen.
Andrew, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
SD Microbes Bierkashi Bokashi started off as an idea in a bar one night. A friend of mine was a brewer in a San Diego brewery, and I had been making my own bokashi for years using Wheat bran from a local feed store. Upcycling grain to make bokashi seemed like a great way to enter the regenerative wave, and so I started collecting their grain and Bierkashi Bokashi was born! I created an Instagram account and a Facebook page, and paid to have a website built. Then I sent samples to growers across the US, and they had amazing results. That’s when I knew I found a great product market fit. I opened up an online store and started selling out very quickly. I had to find a way to get more grains! So, I partnered with Protector Brewery in Miramar; they are San Diego’s only USDA Organic Brewery! The partnership with Protector Brewery made SD Microbes’ products not only regenerative, but organic as well. Additionally, our packaging is biodegradable, and completely compostable. We feel great that our customers get to be part of the solution, not the problem.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I am a husband and a father of three. I work full-time as a Firmware Engineer, and I work additionally for a local regenerative soil company in Escondido; so my biggest struggle is time. Luckily for me, I have an extremely supportive wife, who, along with my oldest son, helps out with SD Microbes. I couldn’t do it without them! SD Microbes is the first company to make beer grain bokashi, so there was no information that existed on how to tackle our processes. Another challenge is that our beer grains are sun-dried and then stored until we can process them into our Bokashi Blend; and even though the song says it doesn’t… it does sometimes rain in Southern California.
Please tell us about SD Microbes Bierkashi Bokashi.
SD Microbes is a product based company in Ramona; our flagship product is the Bierkashi Bokashi blend. Bokashi is a multi-purpose product that can be used to ferment food scraps, accelerate the breaking down of compost, eliminate foul animal and animal waste smells, and is used as a microbial inoculant for soils. We offer the only upcycled organic bokashi on the market. This keeps grains out of landfills where they produce harmful methane gas and puts them back into the soil where they belong. The grains we’re not able to use we donate to a local animal rescue to help feed over 150 rescue animals. Making Bokashi is a process that converts food waste and similar organic matter into a soil amendment which adds nutrients and improves soil texture. It differs from traditional composting methods in several respects. The most important are:
1) The input matter is fermented by specialist bacteria, not decomposed.
2) The fermented matter is fed directly to field or garden soil, without requiring further time to mature.
As a result, virtually all input carbon, energy and nutrients enter the soil food web, having been neither emitted in greenhouse gases and heat nor leached out. The decomposing of organic matter begins after the bokashi has been added to the soil.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
If I had to start over, I would have invested in company infrastructure sooner than I did. Scaling up production is costly but is necessary if you want to grow your business!
Contact Info:
- Website: sdmicrobeworks.com
- Email: andrew@sdmicrobeworks.
com - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sdmicrobes/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Bierkashi/
Image Credit:
Andrew Allen
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