We’ve all been there. Feeling a bit overwhelmed by Christmas pudding, we crawl towards the leftover chocolates and vow that the New Year will signal a new start – no more rubbish food, no more excess. These days, many people are taking their resolutions to a new level and pledging to go vegan for the month of January – or Veganuary.
While eating a plant-based diet can seem challenging, when it comes to beer, we’ve got you covered. All Beerblefish beers are vegan and we pledge to keep them that way.
People are often confused at first when we say our beers are vegan – they often ask why they wouldn’t be, as it isn’t that obvious why animal products would be used in beer production. The answer is isinglass, a kind of gelatin derived from fish that is added to the beer as finings. The finings help any small particles to drop to the bottom of the beer, leaving it clear.
Isinglass has only been used for the last few centuries (initially in wine), and the start of its popularity coincided with people beginning to drink beer from clear glasses instead of ceramic or pewter cups. No-one cares if the beer is cloudy if they don’t have the means to try to see through it!
The finings, then, are a cosmetic addition that just isn’t needed, and we leave them out so that people following a vegan or vegetarian diet can drink our products in the happy knowledge that the fish is in our name and not in our beer!
