The world’s ever-growing population of plant-based dieters is creating demand for more vegan or vegan-friendly alcoholic drink options. It’s become rare to visit a bar or beer brewery that doesn’t have at least one great vegan food option on its menu, and many smaller breweries are becoming completely plant-based. So, it makes sense that the wider beer community should move in this direction too.

What’s not vegan about beer? Well, there’s a couple of sneaky ingredients in the popular brew that often aren’t vegan or vegetarian friendly.

Is beer vegan?

In some cases, beer is not vegan friendly. The base ingredients for many beers are typically barley malt, water, hops and yeast, which is a vegan-friendly start. But, when it comes to clarifying the end product before bottling, kegging or canning, some brewers use animal-derived fining products like gelatine or isinglass (a type of fish-based gelatine product) to refine their brews. This is not an unusual practice either – many large, commercial breweries use this type of fining agent to ‘clear’ their beer, including Guinness.

This too is very often the case in wines – which can contain egg or fish-based fining products. Although the resulting beer and wines may not contain any traces of these non-vegan-friendly ingredients, steadfast vegans will want to be sure they’re supporting vegan-friendly companies with ethical practices – so it pays to research.

The good news is that there are plenty of vegan, or plant-based, beers on the market, and if you’re visiting a brewery or specialist beer bar, the staff on site will generally know whether their provisions are vegan-friendly or not, and what fining agents have been used in the brewing process.