The Rise of Vegan Beer

The rise of vegan beer

- Lorie Parch

VEGAN BEER is having its moment.

Not only are more vegan craft brews showing up at vegfests like LA’s and Portland’s Vegan Beer & Food Festival and the Toronto Vegan Food and Drink Festival, but even Ireland’s 256-year-old Guinness is going animal free, due to pressure from vegetarians and vegans. Th e company announced last November that by late this year it will alter its centuries-old brewing technique to forgo a filtering process that uses fi sh byproducts.

What is vegan beer, anyway?

“Th ere’s long been a misperception that all beer is vegan,” says John Schlimm, author of The Ultimate Beer Lover’s Happy Hour (Cumberland House, 2014) and a member of the Straub Brewery family of Pennsylvania. “But people are starting to ask questions about what’s in their beer, and more specifically how it’s produced.” It is often in the making that some brews lose their animal-free status. At the filtering stage, manufacturers may use isinglass (made from fi sh bladders) and other animal products, such as egg whites and seashells.

This is more common among craft brewers, in fact, since many large breweries can afford sophisticated filtration techniques that don’t require these animal derived products. A beer may also be vegetarian, but not vegan, if dairy (as in a milk stout), honey, or other ingredients from animals are added.