Why Bastet?
Beer also figures prominently in Egyptian literature and sayings. For example, an inscription from around 2200 BC says “The mouth of a perfectly contented man is filled with beer.” Another, from the Instructions of Ani, says “When she sent you to school, And you were taught to write, She kept watching over you daily, With bread and beer from her house.”
The Egyptian cat goddess Bastet represented both the gentle domestic cat and the war-like lioness. Egyptian gods and goddesses closely resembled the appearance of humans, but many of their gods, such as Bastet, were also perceived as human hybrids depicted with human bodies bearing the heads of animals. These symbols were used as a recognition aid and a device to visually convey the powers, identity and attributes of the deity. Bastet’s name literally means, “She of the perfume jar” and in hieroglyphics appears as symbols for oil jar, feminine and a seated goddess.
In short, the story of Bastet is a story of how beer saved the world. History has again and again shown that beer has changed the world in significant ways. The name Bastet is a celebration of this fact and is an homage to one of the world’s greatest beer making cultures, ancient Egypt.
In the past few months we’ve served our beers at many Bay Area craft beer festivals that were tremendous successes for us and made us a lot of new friends. Thanks to everyone for the support and encouragement!
What exactly is “spent grain,” you may ask? Depending on the type of beer we’re making, we brew with grains like barley, oats, wheat or rye. Some of these grains are malted, roasted and toasted to create different flavors in a beer. After the brewing process is complete, we take these “spent grains” and dry them out and make a flour with them, which we use in our baking recipes. The flavors these spent grains bring to baked goods is similar to the flavors they bring to a beer. A brewing grain like chocolate malt, which will impart chocolately flavors in a beer, will also deliver chocolately flavors in a baked good. We think this is a great re-use of a byproduct of the beer brewing process that brewers typically either sell or give away to farmers as cattle feed or compost. We like the synergy that comes from the collaboration between the brewer and the baker!

Bastet Brewing co-founders
Tom Ross and Huston Lett