I THINK the first question to answer for many people is why isn’t beer suitable for vegans and vegetarians. Many people aren’t aware that many beers have been made bright or clear using fining agents made from animal products such as Isinglass, which is made from fish.
Over the last few years there has been a trend in consumers looking for greater vegan and vegetarian offers from the food and drink industry and this has been true in the alcohol industry as well.
FAB made the decision to make all our beers vegan. Our bottled ales had always been vegan friendly as we only filter the beer. For our cask ales we carried out some finings trials with different products before settling on a German product that uses silica.
The first two beers we trialled were our pale bitter and Harvest Gold, and when these proved successful, we rolled it out across the whole range.
We regularly get positive comments on the fact that our beers are vegetarian and vegan and we make sure that our labelling makes it clear.
There is one beer in the range that isn’t suitable for Vegans and that is Fabuccino as it is a coffee milk stout and we use lactose in it.