Molson Inc.’s brewery in Edmonton is putting its old beer out to pasture.

And the cows are lapping it up.

The beer-making giant is feeding its stale-dated beer or stock that isn’t adequately rotated in stores to Alberta beef cattle.

Call it a moo-vingly innovative way to lock horns with what used to be a waste beer disposal headache. “We were looking at doing something different than putting it down the sewer, which isn’t the most environmentally friendly thing to do,” says Peter Rochefort, loss-control manager in charge of environment, health and safety for Molson’s in Edmonton.

Molson’s started experimenting with the idea a few years ago. The company, working with the University of Alberta, duplicated some tests that the Japanese – known for their prized Kobe beef – did in feeding beer to cattle.

Cows were fed up to 28 kilograms of beer a day in those tests, Rochefort recalls.

But if you’re imagining tipsy bovines staggering over the moon, forget it.

Contented cows, yes. Fermented cows, no.

Cattle have a complex stomach that breaks down the alcohol in beer, transforming it to acetate, a natural energy source for the animals.

“They don’t get intoxicated from it. It never reaches the bloodstream,” Rochefort says.

(Ah, if only B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell would have been blessed with a bovine digestive system on that fateful night in Hawaii.)

Molson’s sends all its old beer to one ranch in the greater Edmonton area that has about 1,000 head of cattle.

The volumes vary from 4,500 litres to 45,000 litres a week, depending on how much old beer turns up, Rochefort says.

The beer is mixed with silage or regular cattle feed to produce a wet mash. Each cow gets a daily allotment of 4.5 kilograms of beer (the equivalent of about 12 bottles) mixed with 18 kilograms of feed.

“They don’t go to the trough and drink it,” Rochefort says. (Unlike some party animals we know.)

The rancher works with a veterinarian and a livestock nutritionist to ensure the cattle are well nourished. The ranch is equipped with special tanks, tank-cleaning systems and automatic piping.

Rochefort says that with Alberta’s recurrent drought and shortage of cattle feed, the demand by ranchers for stale-dated beer is insatiable.

Not just any old beer, mind you.

Asked if the cattle prefer any particular brand, Rochefort chuckles that none of the cows have complained yet. But, he adds, “it’s got to be Molson’s.”