Can Vegans Drink Alcohol? Things You Need to Know
Whether you’re new to veganism or a plant-based veteran, there will always be types of food and drink that you’re unsure about in regard to being vegan-friendly. Booze, for example. Can vegans drink alcohol or is alcohol vegan, you may ask? Or do those on a vegan lifestyle even drink alcohol? What are some vegan drinks available to them?
Although you may be quick to assume that there is no need for vegan alcohol because all alcohol must be vegan, right? The reality is that some red wine and craft beers use animal products for thinning agents in the brewing process, such as egg whites, gelatine, skimmed milk, and even fish bladders or animal bones (I know, grim).
In this post, I’ll answer the question ‘can vegans drink alcohol?’ with a quick yet comprehensive guide to vegan-friendly alcoholic beverages and what types of alcohol contain animal ingredients and you should avoid while on a vegan diet, plus what the vegan alternatives are.
Is Alcohol Vegan?
So yeah, it’s not necessarily a case of ‘is alcohol vegan?’ but more of a ‘which alcohol brands are vegan?’. But as a vegan, you will be no stranger to doubling down on your research and checking religiously nutritional information to make sure that you aren’t consuming animal products.
The great news for those on a plant-based diet is that many leading and upcoming alcohol companies are doing their utmost to produce high-quality, delicious drinks without the need to use animal products during the production process. However, there will always be companies who attempt to create fantastic, unique flavors which require a little extra help from thinning agents and other ingredients — which more often than not, are from animals.
Vegan Wine
All wines are not considered to be vegan or even vegetarian-friendly because of how the wine is clarified and a process called ‘fining process’, which is a process that removes haze-inducing molecules. All young wines contain tiny molecules such as proteins, tartrates and phenolics. All of which are natural, and not at all harmful. However, wine-drinkers do love their wine to look as clear and bright as possible!
Wine producers use a variety of ‘fining agents’ to help the clarification process along. Essentially, a fining agent acts like a magnet that attracts the molecules around it. By coagulating around the fining agent, it creates fewer but larger particles, which can then be removed easily.
Traditionally, the most common fining agents were casein (a milk protein), gelatin (animal protein), albumin (egg whites) and isinglass (fish bladder protein). These are known as ‘processing aids’ and are not additives for the wine, as they are removed along with the ‘haze’ molecules. While the use of casein and albumin are acceptable to (most) vegetarians, they are a strict no-no for vegans as there is the possibility of these fining agents being absorbed into the finished wine.
So can vegans drink alcohol? What can make a wine vegan? What are some vegan-friendly wines? Here are some good news. Many modern winemakers use silica gel, bentonite and other clay-based vegan products, as they have proved to be a very efficient way of removing unwanted proteins. Activated charcoal is another vegan-friendly agent that is also used for white wine. Many California wine have vegan-friendly options, and many of them do add vegan symbols on the bottles to indicate they are fully vegan.
As well as this, the popularization of more natural winemaking methods means more vegan and vegetarian-friendly wines. As more wine producers around the world decide not to fine or filter their wines, leaving them to self-clarify and self-stabilise, it opens the door for a more recognizably vegan-friendly wine market. Such wines usually state on the label that they are ‘not fined or not filtered’.
Here’s a list of vegan wines.
Is Beer Vegan?
In short, some beer is vegan, and others are most definitely not. Much like wine, many beer companies rely on thinning agents such as egg whites, gelatine, and fish bladders to remove unwanted molecules from their beers, whether it’s ale or lager. So, as you can imagine, this poses somewhat of a problem to all the vegans out there who just want a cold beer after a hard day at work but don’t want to abandon their beliefs.
The four key ingredients of beer are water, yeast, hops and a grain such as barley or wheat. As the yeast ferments, it digests the sugar from the grain to produce alcohol! Voila, you have yourself a boozy beverage! As you can see, all of these ingredients are natural and therefore 100% suitable for vegans. Unfortunately, many breweries use non-vegan ingredients to add flavor and color or to clarify their products. Not only this, but the craft beer industry is creating unique flavors using ingredients such as honey (more on the debate whether or not honey is vegan), chocolate and even bacon… the mind boggles. So it’s essential to do your homework and research animal-based ingredients a bit before you try the newest cask ales in town.
The beer industry is a powerhouse in the alcohol world, which means that it’s good business to cater to the needs of everyone, including veganism. Therefore, there are many big-name brands as well as breweries on the rise that forego the use of thinning agents and non-vegan/vegetarian flavor variants. In fact, most commercial beers and most popular beers from well-known breweries are now vegan-friendly. Some vegan-friendly beer?
- Budweiser and Bud Light
- Coors and Coors Light
- Corona Extra and Corona Light
- Michelob Ultra
- Miller Genuine Draft and Miller High Life
- Heineken
- Pabst Blue Ribbon
- Guinness Draught and Guinness Original XX
Of course, this is just a small amount of vegan beers available today, but I didn’t want to keep you here all day reading a long, long list. A quick online search will provide you with more than enough options to ensure that you have all the vegan alcoholic drinks you could hope for. Like this list of the Top 10 Vegan Beers, for example.
Distilled Spirits or ‘Hard Liquor’ – Is alcohol vegan?
If you’re someone who prefers spirits such as whiskey, vodka, tequila, gin and rum — whether it’s neat, on the rocks or with a mixer — you’re in luck! Pretty much every distilled spirit, apart from a few (which I’ll mention in a minute) are 100% vegan alcohol, such as my favorite Gee Up Premix. Unlike wine and beer, a process called distillation is used for spirits, in which the alcohol is concentrated from fermented ingredients. That means no fining or thinning agents to speak of, but that doesn’t mean every spirit you can get your hands on is going to be vegan-friendly.
It gets a little bit tricky when it comes to flavored spirits, many of which rely on animal-derived products such as honey to provide a more desirable, easy-to-drink alternative to their flagship bottlings. And in most cases, brands tend to look to honey as an ideal ingredient to make their flavored spirits appeal to the masses. It’s for this reason that you still have to maintain some awareness when you next grab a bottle of your favorite spirit from the shelf. It also depends on the manufacturer, because while the leading brands may not adopt non-vegan production methods, there may well be others who are striving to achieve flavors or other characteristics that require additional animal-derived ingredients and agents. Typically, ingredients added to flavored spirits include milk, creme and honey. But vegan spirits are generally very easy to find. Cream-based liqueurs are an obvious no-go.
So, what about cocktails? Do vegans drink alcohol?
That’s a good question and definitely the most difficult to provide a definitive answer for. Although the ingredients of classic cocktails remain consistent, and in some cases, they don’t at all, new cocktails are being created and experimented with every day, by bartenders all over the world. If you are a vegan with a taste for cocktails, your best bet is to always ask the bartender who will be making it. They will know exactly what is going into your drink, so who better to highlight any potential non-vegan variables and suggest some vegan options?
Sometimes you may be lucky enough to stumble upon a bar or restaurant that is particularly vigilant with their labeling of vegan and vegetarian food and drink, but as you know, it’s not always the case. So the best rule to live by when it comes to cocktails — always ask!
Making cocktails at home? Try these vegan recipes!
Amélie is a health and wellness junky. Certified yoga instructor with Yoga Alliance in the Vinyasa and Ashtanga styles, she has a Yoga Instructor Certification – Level I (300 hours) and Yoga Instructor Certification – Level II (200 hours) under her belt. She also has a certified Open Water Diver certification with PADI and SSI Scuba Schools International Freediving Level I certification with SSI Scuba Schools International. She’s been vegan for over 15 years and is obsessed with anything wellness-related.