The predominant ingredient in these bars? Spent grain from brewing beer.

It’s a good bet that when you’re downing that frosty mug of beer, you’re not thinking about the spent grain that went into brewing it.

But there’s a lot of it. A whole lot.

Indeed, when beer is made, about 85 percent of its ingredients ends up as waste that is usually composted or sold off to feed livestock.

Now, Dan Kurzrock and Jordan Schwartz have come up with a novel — and delicious — way to reuse that discarded grain.

The hobbyist brewers created ReGrained, granola-like bars made from spent grain donated by three Bay Area craft breweries: Magnolia Brewing, 21st Amendment Brewery, and Triple Voodoo.

I tried samples recently of the two types of bars: Chocolate Coffee Stout Bar (made with darker grains) and Honey Almond IPA Bar (made with grains from lighter hued beers).

A crunchy bite.

Neither bar is nearly as sweet as your average granola bar, which is a nice change of pace. Both have a very crunchy, crumbly and dry cereal-like texture. The Stout Bar has bits of Guittard semisweet chocolate to add just a little decadence. Its earthy, bitter coffee flavor will definitely get your taste buds revved up. The IPA Bar is wonderfully toasty and full of almonds. It also has a nice complexity from the local Gipson’s Golden honey used in it.

Besides being good for the environment, the bars also are good for the body. The spent grain has twice the protein of quinoa and six times the fiber of oats. The Stout Bar has 240 calories; the IPA Bar has 190 calories.

Don’t be leery about feeding these bars to your kids, either. They contain no alcohol.

Two bars sell for $5.99 on the ReGrained site.

If the ReGrained guys get their way, you could be eating even more beer in the future, too, as they’re hoping to eventually make “flour” and baking mixes from the spent grain.

WINNER OF LAST WEEK’S CONTEST

In the last Food Gal contest, I asked you to tell me your favorite salty pleasure. The best answer will receive a $10 gift card from the San Francisco Salt Company.

Hawaiian black salt from the San Francisco Salt Company.

Congrats to:

Grace, who wrote, “This is coming from someone who carries a salt shaker in her purse, and I’m not kidding. i use it on fruit, it goes on ice cream, I use it in my coffee grounds, I sprinkle it on a slice of bread. I can’t feel guilty about any of my salt usage because I use it EVERYWHERE. I might have a problem…”