Guide to the Best Vegan
Beer, Wine, and Spirits

From insects to ox blood, fish bladders to boiled skin, animal products are in many alcoholic beverages. Hmmmmm!

Photo Credit: Muffet

SIDE NOTE ::: I find it really silly that I should even have to write this post. Vegan beer should just be called beer because animals products have no business in my booze. Sigh.

Seriously? There are Animal Products in My Beer?!

Yep. Unfortunately, we have to be a little selective when it comes to finding the best vegan beer, wine, and spirits.

Many of the ingredients are animal by-products that are used for filtering, adding color, and making a creamy head of foam.

• American beers are normally vegan, but check your labels.
• Irish, Scottish, and British beers (like Guinness – formerly my favorite beer) commonly use isinglass, casein, or gelatin – all animal products.
• German and Belgium beers are predominately vegan thanks to strict purity laws in those countries.

Don’t forget you can always contact a brewery to check on the ingredients or home-brew your own concoction.

Animal Ingredients in Booze

• Insects ::: oddly enough, insects are ground up and used in dyes for coloring
• Isinglass ::: derived from the swim bladders of some tropical fish
• Casein, Potassium Caseinate, and Modified Casein ::: a dairy milk protein
• Gelatin ::: a protein obtained by boiling cattle and pig skin, tendons, ligaments, and bones
• Egg Albumen ::: clear liquid found in female chicken’s productive organs
• Chitin ::: derived from the shells of crabs or lobsters
• Honey ::: made directly from the stomach of bees
• Albium ::: protein found in animal blood
• Bone Char ::: a granular material produced by charring animal bones
• Glyceryl monostearate ::: found in fatty animal tissue – used to control foam
• Lactose ::: a sugar found in cow’s milk
• White sugar ::: added for flavor and often whitened using bone charcoal
• Pepsin ::: a stomach enzyme normally extracted from pigs and added to beer to control foam
• Charcoal ::: produced from animal bones and used to filter out the cloudy appearance of some brews
• Diatomaceous Earth ::: used in filtering and comes from sea shells and fossils

Guides to the Best Vegan Booze

• Barnivore: Your Vegan Wine, Beer, and Liquor Guide
• VegNews Guide to Vegan Beer
• PETA’s List of Vegan-Friendly Beer