Beer isn’t always vegan?!

Yep. Beer isn’t always vegan. Neither is wine. I know… your mind is being blown right now, right? Mine was too! So many things I didn’t know as a new vegan! So if you’re newly vegan and you accidentally drank some Guinness do you lose your vegan card? nah! veganbros.com recently did a video about this too so it’s perfect timing for this! If you’re vegan and you don’t check to see if your beer or wine isn’t vegan in my book you can still call yourself vegan. There’s a website & app called barnivore that will tell you if your booze is vegan. Pretty handy!! But not all booze is in there. and it can be annoying to have to quickly look it up as a bartender is waiting for you to place your order.

Bartender: What can i get you?
Random Vegan: umm… which beers are vegan?
Bartender: Excuse me?
Random Vegan: Nevermind… let me check my app
Bartender: [rolling eyes]
People in line waiting: [sigh]
Everyone’s impression? Vegans are the worst! and really who wants to give off that impression? IF it’s really important to you to be 100% vegan (or as close to it as possible) then you go ahead & rock it. look it up and everyone in line can wait an extra 30 seconds to get their drinks- the world will still turn. However you might have just given a potential vegan the impression that being vegan is really hard and we can’t even drink beer. i mean seriously do we need more obstacles? so depending on why you’re vegan and what you feel is the right decision for you you might consider skipping checking the app and just getting the beer. unless it’s a milk stout. then you might actually get sick.

SO… on to the real meat of the story… WHY isn’t beer vegan? Some beer is processed with this stuff called isinglass. It’s made from the swim bladders of fish that are already harvested for food (read: no fish were killed specifically for making beer or wine). This is more common in european beers like Guinness. It’s used to stabilize and clarify the beer. Gelatin, made from hides & bones of animals, is used to do the same thing. There’s also the whole bone char filter thing like there is for sugar. Basically charred animal bones that are made into a filter to process the beer. Gross. And of course some beer has honey as a sweetener and honey isn’t vegan. Also who wants honey in their beer?! Weirdos.

So that’s why beer and wine sometimes isn’t vegan. And why it also kinda doesn’t matter. Kinda.

If you’re vegan do you drink all beer & wine or do you specifically seek out vegan kinds?