I have used it many times and from my first experience it can be quite "fragrant" if left in a pile. I would mix it with shredded leaves ,paper, hay, straw and other high high carbon browns. I've also tilled it into the soil. I think it's a great source of free material ,just treat it with a little caution and don't let it rot on it's own. I agree with Kim on the 1:3 ratio but I would stay away from vegetative waste that tends to be a green and tends to be moist. With spent grains you want dry browns. On the other hand if you hate your neighbors mix the spent grains with freshly mowed grass. Back in the days when I thought greens were green and browns were brown. ooooh boy things got pungeant. lol

Mostly PBR consumed here... just cheap generic-ish beer. A fan of Atwater Brewing Co... their Hell beer is amazing. Mad Hatter Ale a favorite. Two Hearted Ale is very decent. For a hoppy hop beer I love Lake Superior ESB. It has been awhile but I make stout that is priceless. Hard to find good hops these days. Maybe the "coloring" of memory but it seems years ago the hops tasted better. As most brewers recall a terrible plague destroyed the noble hops. Not a huge fan of Cascade hops but Sierra Nevada with the green lable is a decent mid-priced beer. Also a fan of their Porter but it is very filling. Frankenmuth Brewery is about 45 minutes from my home. Years ago before the tornado hit it had the most wonderful brews... I drank many bottles of Bad Frog which was really excellent beer. When it was rebuilt I really enjoyed the heffe weisen they had on tap. It failed economically but has reopened and I've not tried the new brews. Really miss the old brewery which had a brew shop and tours.... for about $2 a pretty girl would lead you around the place and then serve you "samples"... I took many many tours... often the only guest on the tour. Years ago I loved Sam Adams Honey Porter... I'm a fan of the Porter style in general. Alas, they seemed to have changed the recipe or the hops changed. Perhaps my taste changed but it ain't the same anymore.

Did you ever check on this? I'm curious, because I have been getting a by-product from another food product and love it. I get "mint waste" for free from a local grower. When the mint is harvested it is chopped into speically designed wagons, that are then filled with steam which extracts the mint juice (very concentrated!). The remaining chopped plant material is dumped out to cool, and eventually spread back on the fields. I get a load of it every spring and it is black and chopped very fine, so it's easy to handle. No need to worry about the mint growing again--it is cooked at 600 degrees! It has only a slightly minty aroma if I get it right after harvest; otherwise it just smells like hay. But the best part--it is free.

Wow! This is a lonely old post. Hopefully by now we have some homebrewers in the crowd. Some friends and I got into homebrewing a few years ago and brew every chance we get. I never tried any of the kits though. We built our own systems complete with laser cut home made jet burners and stands, copper coil wort chillers, cooler mash tuns, and modified 1/2 barrel cookpots. My most recent addition was a 20 gal. conical fermenter. I'll never go back to carboys. Memorial Day weekend we brewed a combined 100 gallons in my back yard. I'm always up for homebrew stories!