Is Isinglass in beer vegan?

Key facts

Verdict

Depends on the brand

Category

Drink

Also listed as

fish bladder finings

Best swap

Unfined beers

Why

Isinglass, gelatin and egg albumen are used as fining agents to clear beer and wine. Most modern craft and canned beers are unfined or use silica and PVPP instead.

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What is actually in it

Isinglass is a pure form of collagen obtained from the dried swim bladders of fish — historically sturgeon, today mostly catfish and other warm-water species. Brewers and winemakers use it as a fining agent: added to the tank, its positively charged collagen attracts negatively charged yeast cells and haze particles, clumping them so they settle out and leave a bright, clear drink. The isinglass itself is removed with the sediment, so almost none remains in the glass — but the drink has been processed with fish, which is enough to make it non-vegan. Cask-conditioned real ale is the classic user, because the cask format relies on finings to clear quickly; many traditional British cask ales still use it, while most keg, bottled and canned beers are filtered or centrifuged instead and are often accidentally vegan. The industry has been moving: Guinness famously went vegan in 2017 after 256 years, and many large breweries now use silica gel, PVPP, bentonite or centrifuges. Wine has the same issue with isinglass plus gelatin, casein and egg albumin; bentonite clay and pea-protein finings are the vegan alternatives. Because finings are processing aids, they rarely appear on labels — the dependable signals are a vegan trademark, the brewer's own statement, or databases such as Barnivore that track producer confirmations.

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