Hormel Foods collaborates to build a motorcycle powered by bacon grease

Online pastry courses are a fantastic way to learn how to successfully blend elements of sweet and savory. Take, for example, the popular maple bacon doughnut. Learning how to create this breakfast treasure will certainly have your friends scrambling toward your kitchen. However, a motorcycle being run on bacon grease might eventually have them running toward your car. The motorcycle is a collaboration between bacon giant Hormel Foods and a biodiesel production company aimed at taking a serious look at this potentially sustainable fuel. Organizers of the project cite the fact that bacon grease is essentially carbon-neutral. This means that you can burn a lot of bacon grease and release almost no carbon emissions into the environment. The team appears to have high hopes about the project, believing that it could be one solution to eventually creating vehicles that are more environmentally friendly.

The motorcycle
Incredibly, the bacon-powered hog gets approximately 75 to 100 miles per gallon. The pig fuel costs about the same price as regular unleaded gasoline, coming in at $3.50 a gallon. For breakfast lovers the best part is that the exhaust fumes emit that savory bacon smell, bringing a smile to both the driver and passersby. All the grease is from Black Label bacon and came from the Hormel Foods plant in Rochelle, Illinois. The team points out that if the bacon grease fuel becomes practical for use on a larger scale, it would be safer to transport than other fuel sources.

Project organizers told the Washington Times, “If there were a bacon biodiesel tanker spill in the ocean, the fuel would be safe and mouthwatering fish food.”

Driven by Bacon
Hormel Foods has given one bacon lover the opportunity to ride the motorcycle from Austin, Minnesota, to San Diego, California. The trip will be filmed for a documentary titled “Driven by Bacon.” The film crew hopes to find people across the country passionate about the cured pork product and raise awareness about the alternative fuel source. While the unidentified rider enjoys the constant smell of bacon on his or her cross-country road trip, editors will be tasked with compiling the footage into a cohesive documentary. The film will premiere at the end of the trip when the bike arrives in San Diego at the International Bacon Film Festival.