The fishy ingredient in beer that bothers vegetarians

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-37350233

by bhum • 10 years ago

31 59 10 years ago

bbc.co.uk

colinramsay2• 10 years ago

In the UK there's a definite sentiment that a cloudy pint is a bad or off pint. I've seen a few breweries that specifically label their beer as "unfined" to make sure people know what to expect.

I do find the slight distaste of fish bladders in this article a bit baffling though.

talldan9• 10 years ago

Not sure I agree with that. There's the same attitude pretty much everywhere, its not any more prevalent in the UK. Lager the whole world over has the same sort of clarity.

In fact, the UK has a stronger craft beer and real ale scene than many other countries, so I'd say there are a lot of people here willing to drink a cloudy glass.

It's much more likely that the continued use of Isinglass is due to tradition, and no great desire to change an existing product/process.

forlulz• 10 years ago

For a long time, in the UK at least, clarity just is more visually appealing. In the past the role of the cellarman was much more hands-on; there was a time where beer was unfined leaving the brewery and fined on delivery once casks were put in place. Much of this art is disappearing, but it has been a while that the beer has been designed to be clear. With that, the bottom of casks are murky with yeast (since filtering is uncommon) and isinglass - which may make you ill (it tastes bad too) so cloudy beer has been associated with off beer or the end-of-cask.

I've tried serving a cask wheat beer which was rejected purely by appearance in the past.

Mind you, things have been changing rapidly in 5/6 years and many breweries make their tasty products without isinglass (or vegan-friendly alternatives+). Some choose to be fairly close to pin bright and others less so - depends on many things like more flocculant house yeast, etc.

I can say that around 5 years ago, a brewery made the decision to switch to being unfined for flavour - and their products were cloudy then onwards. It was difficult to 'sell' then, but now it's a commonplace. And yes, a pub did an informal experiement: flavours were altered with the addition of isinglass but from a general public opinion was divided in which they preferred (almost 50/50)

+ not necessarily equivalent. Some products are introduced during the brewing process, not after

colinramsay2• 10 years ago

Oh I wasn't saying it was necessarily more prevalent, just that it's something that I've seen in person.

CannisterFlux• 10 years ago

Is this something unique to British-brewed beers? According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isinglass "Isinglass finings are widely used as a processing aid in the British brewing industry to accelerate the fining, or clarification, of beer". I cannot recall ever seeing anything like this on the ingredients lists of cans from other countries (e.g. French or Spanish beers), but maybe it doesn't count as an ingredients for some reason or maybe other countries use something worse to clear the beer.

Nursie8• 10 years ago

It's used in champagne and all sorts of other products, but as it's used in processing and not considered an ingredient, it can probably be left off in a lot of places.

Nursie8• 10 years ago

And when I lived in Australia I noticed a bottle of pink champagne (I think it was veuve cliquot rose?) had a notice about fish parts on the side, which I've never seen in the UK. Labelling laws may be different in different places.

creshal3• 10 years ago

Apparently in Germany it fell out of use – mechanical filtration systems are better and cheaper nowadays –, and is only used for some traditional wines (and possibly beers).

However, it is not considered an ingredient, and so does not need to be listed on the bottles.

franze• 10 years ago

In germany there is something called "Reinheitsgebot" - the oldest (1516) food law in existence (if you don't count religious "laws"). It states that you can only use water, barley and hops for beer production. So no fish in german beer.

talldan9• 10 years ago

It'd be strange for it not to be an ingredient. As far as I understand it's added directly to the wort prior to fermentation.

dublinclontarf2• 10 years ago

Large scale commercial beer producers user filtering, and in the case of lagers it doesn't matter because the beer is left to settle for quite some time.

In the UK with Real Ale, especially cask ale it's used because it's unfiltered and has lots of live yeast and sediment which needs to settle at the bottom of the cask.

Nursie8• 10 years ago

The skewed view given in the article is hilarious.

"Nobody really wants to advertise that they filter their beer through dead fish"

Well that would be because they don't. Isinglass has a long history of use in beer and wine, and is a refined collagen. If you don't want animal products in beer, awesome, go for it. The slightly hysterical language is unnecessary though.

-- edit -- Another technique sometimes used is to fine with beef gelatin... Not sure how widespread this is commercially, but it seems relatively popular with homebrewers. Vegetarians do need to be careful with beer.

coldtea• 10 years ago

Isinglass has a long history of use in beer and wine, and is a refined collagen.

A long history before modern manufacture of crappy commercial beers?

Nursie8• 10 years ago

I believe that it's likely to be too expensive for use in most crappy commercial beers, which are likely to be heavily filtered instead.

dagw3• 10 years ago

Here's a quote from 1760[1]:

“I well remember for many years it was not expected, nor was it thought possible [for porter] to be made fine and bright, and four and five months was deemed to be sufficient age for it to be drunk at. The improvement of transparency has since been added to it by means of more and better workmanship, better malt, better hops and the use of isinglass.”

[1] http://tempestinatankard.com/2013/11/21/of-isinglass-and-oth...

fennecfoxen• 10 years ago

Vegetarians do need to be careful with beer.

Vegetarians may wish to be careful with beer. Some vegetarians aren't ideological/religious about it, and some that are draw lines in different places.

thaumasiotes2• 10 years ago

As cited in http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/11/why-drunk-v...:

Another survey from the USDA, also conducted by phone, put the [proportion] of vegetarians who’ve eaten meat in the last day at about two-thirds.

Nursie8• 10 years ago

Quite right, people are vegetarian for a variety of reasons, and draw the line in different place!

It's worth noting that good results can be achieved with proper temperature control and irish moss, isinglass is not always needed. Also many/most keg beers are filtered rather than fined.

talldan9• 10 years ago

Some of the language in the article is a bit strange:

"Its stance means Marble is one of a handful of breweries to be approved by the Vegetarian Society, something that's earned it a loyal following."

'Handful' is completely meaningless in this context. How can a brewery fit into a hand? The actual list is also quite long and by no means exhaustive: http://www.vegsocapproved.com/ProductCategory/Details/126?pa...

Especially when you consider a lot of craft breweries are using vegetarian friendly techniques for clarifying their brews.

thaumasiotes2• 10 years ago

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/handful

2: a small quantity or number <a handful of people>

How can a person fit into a hand?

Alternatively, when were you given the power to decide what words should mean in a language you claim not to be familiar with?

DanBC• 10 years ago

You link to a list of all the approved beers, not the approved breweries. Each brewery is responsible for multiple beers.

netnichols• 10 years ago

My thoughts exactly. I laughed out loud a couple of times at the hysteria permeating this article.

1rae• 10 years ago

There was lots of new recently about Guinness moving away from isinglass so that should be vegan friendly soon too!

In wine they also use egg whites to filter it, my dad get some kind of allergic reaction from these too so we stick to vegan wines in our house.

mrob• 10 years ago

"Ask somebody to list the classic ingredients of beer and the chances are they will come back with: hops, malt, barley and water, with a bit of yeast thrown in for good measure."

It seems strange listing both "malt" and "barley". Malt is just partially sprouted barley (or occasionally other grains). In most beers all the barley is malted. Some beers do contain both malted and unmalted barley, for example Guinness, but unmalted barley can make beer cloudy so it's usually only used in dark beers.

MrLeftHand6• 10 years ago

I hope they are OK with dead animals being used to fuel their cars, made into plastics to pack their stuff, producing the electricity to power their house and all the stuff in it.

Never heard people being offended by killing plants for food, cutting trees grinding them into paper or just to have it as a decoration for holidays.

I do agree, if it's only for aesthetics we could actually leave it out and not kill something for just having clear beer.

In the end everything is made up from the same starstuff as humans, a squirrel, even the rock in the dirt and the dirt itself. Some of it is considered living the others not.

Why do I always feel a bit of hypocrisy when it comes to these topics?

dublinclontarf2• 10 years ago

Careful when leaving the house, you might step on a bacterium or a spore.

MrLeftHand6• 10 years ago

I won't leave the house until they invent the hoverboard.

icebraining3• 10 years ago

What hypocrisy? Many vegans object to killing animals but not the use of remains of already dead ones.

Use of isinglass requires killing new fish to extract their swim bladders. Meanwhile, nobody is killing animals to turn them into oil.

Besides, it'd only be hypocrisy if they're judging others. Simply saying "I'd like my beer free from fish bladders" isn't, even if you think the reason is ridiculous.

MrLeftHand6• 10 years ago

First of all it's free from fish bladders, because you're not consuming that. That fish might have been killed to end up on the plate of non-vegans. So the fish was already killed for other reasons in the first place. And following this thought, then vegans can go and wear clothes made out of skin. Cows, pigs, sheep aren't killed for their skin in the first place. It's just a byproduct that is used.

The hypocrisy lies in the valuing lives of certain beings over others.

Or when vegans have carnivorous animals as pets. Feeding them with canned guts and other leftover parts of animals. And whining about fish bladders in beer.

I will state that from an energetic standpoint it would be great, if the whole world would go vegan. I have no objections.

But I don't like people going mental on fish bladder whilst they are still polluting the environment as the others and have to have a rage fit about literally everything.

Oh and lastly, we don't have to drink beer. Alcohol was needed when humanity didn't have clean water and we needed alcohol to disinfect it. Now we have all the water we want. From the tap, or bottled.

You are not required to drink alcohol, at all.

Oh and why aren't they considering the huge impact we have on the environment just by growing crops for beer. A social, useless beverage. Like the fish are the only ones who suffer cause of this.

All and all, I'm fine removing fish bladders from the filtering process, but wont get a hissy fit if they continue to use it.

Fricken• 10 years ago

People making no effort to be good are ok. But people who are trying to be good but are less than perfect have giant targets on their backs for some reason.

MrLeftHand6• 10 years ago

Making no effort is not OK. Making effort with little to no insight to things wont help either.

For example that fish bladder comes from fish. That fish was probably killed for it's meat. So even if you're not using fish bladder in the beer clearing procedure, that fish will be killed and that part thrown away. Than you use some kind of substitute which has to be grown, or manufactured. That needs land, energy etc...

In short you will have a bigger impact on the environment, because the fish will be killed anyway. And now you have to produce extra filtering agents for the beer, because you will lose customers who like clear beer.

And all of this for a couple of vegan beer drinkers.

Well done.

rabboRubble• 10 years ago

A close relative is vegan for ethical reasons. I looooooove sending articles like this to her :-)

The fishy ingredient in beer that bothers vegetarians

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