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Vegans, Vegetarianism and Beer- All Your Doubts Answered Here

by Mayuri Rajvanshi | December 14, 2018

Game nights, a binge Netflix series session or a girls’ night out- you can never go wrong with a happy tall pilsner-full of cold and fizzy beer. But does it ever gets you wondering, whether the seemingly harmless ale could be hiding a bit more of truth to it? What does this golden drink hide in for vegetarians and vegans? Most importantly, is it cruelty free? 

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The Dilemma Around Beer

There is always something good happening around a beer! The method of distilling liquor is traditionally vegan, but the practice of adding animal based ingredients to the mix has been the norm from time immemorial. 
With over 16 million people in United States taking the vegetarian or vegan route, the demand for strict plant based products have increased dynamically. For both vegans and vegetarians, the dilemma about the suitability of beer is a cause for concern. 

Why It May Not Be Vegan Beer?

Some brewers prefer adding honey and milk to enhance the flavor of the beer, which makes it automatically not suited for vegans. Apart from this, even regular beer cannot always be considered vegan, due to a fine detail in the filtering process.

Beers tend to develop a cloudiness, which is slightly off-putting for a beer lover. Many brewers think this as unattractive, and to increase the aesthetic appeal of the beer, they filter out the liquors by adding ‘finings’, such aslike gelatin or isinglass. While gelatin is made from bone, skin, and tissue extracts, Isinglass is made from dried bladders of fish, and is paste link. When Isinglass is injected into the beer cask, the left over sediments and yeast will cling to the paste, and once the paste is removed, clarified beer sparkles enticingly. But, the fact remains, that some traces of isinglass remains in the cask.

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Is There Something Like a Vegan Beer?

The good news is, yes! Modern Technology has come up with countless new filtering methods to clear up cloudy beer without the need for animal by products. It is believed that yeast and grain sediments left in the beer, enhance the flavor. For this reason, few brewers are just content with cloudy beer. Vegetarian beer finings made from Irish moss and seaweed is a boon to brewers who prefer distilling out the cloudiness.
Several online resources are available to help make the search for vegan beer easier. Few sites are dedicated to all types of vegan beer.

Here is the list of Vegan Alcohol, your ultimate guide to cruelty free drinks!

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