All kinds of weird shit you’d think would be vegan aren’t… like some brands of white sugar (bone char) and some beers (isinglass [fish swim bladders]). And there’s always our good friend with a million names, cochineal/carmine/crimson lake/natural red 4/E120, aka bugs that make your food red.
Beer is safe here in Germany! :D
We’ve got a thing called “Deutsches Reinheitsgebot”/“The German Law of Purity”, that prohibits the use of anything but water, barley, hops and yeast in making beer. So the beer itself is always vegan, you just have to watch out for little dumb stuff like the brand Bitburger using Milk-based glue for the labels on their glass beer bottles.
Filtrate medium is not considered to be an ingredient, nor are additives that are removed by filtration except for technically impossible residue. This most notably includes PVPP as a coagulation agents to remove polyphenols which otherwise could help in the formation of haze when the beer is stored improperly or over longer times.
I know. It is just that there is articles every now and then that complain about “plastic in beer” and reference the fact that this is not a violation of the German purity law.
Does PVPP come from animal products? Everything I could find about it suggests petrochemicals. Which is technically vegan. *ahem* “Vegan leather” *ahem*.
It is not an animal product. It came to my mind as an example because every other year or so i see articles complaining about “plastic in beer” being allowed in Germany.
Using isinglass, which comes from fish, for filtration is not common in industrial breweries in Germany, but it also isn’t prohibited. Industrial breweries mostly use diatomaceous earth filters. So in a first step they mix the beer with the PVPP so that coagulation can occur. Water is mixed with diatomaceous earth and run through a filter sieve, where the diatomaceous earth is retained and forms a filter cake and then the beer is run through that filter, removing almost all of the PVPP.
A similar process can be done using the isinglass instead of the PVPP and using isinglass is more common for filtration of wine.
So most beer probably is vegan (aside from the traces of insects and rodents that made it into the grain-silo), but there is no legal guarantee that every product made according to the German purity law is vegan.
They sneak gelatin into so many things too. One that got me for a year or two after I went vegetarian was Altoids. I liked to keep em in my car to have something to munch/occupy myself while driving, and never even thought to check the ingredients. How could mints have animal in em? Turns out they have gelatin! I honestly never miss meat or anything, but I do miss gelatin to a degree. Not because I want gelatin in particular, but it’s in so many tasty things, and vegetarian gummies and the like are always so expensive ;_;
i was about to recommend katyes, because they are great and cost like 1€ a bag in local stores, but apparently, thats 5€ on amazon (fuck amazon), so unless u can get them locally, thats not exactly a good option :<
All kinds of weird shit you’d think would be vegan aren’t… like some brands of white sugar (bone char) and some beers (isinglass [fish swim bladders]). And there’s always our good friend with a million names, cochineal/carmine/crimson lake/natural red 4/E120, aka bugs that make your food red.
I’ll just stick to limiting my meat intake.
Beer is safe here in Germany! :D We’ve got a thing called “Deutsches Reinheitsgebot”/“The German Law of Purity”, that prohibits the use of anything but water, barley, hops and yeast in making beer. So the beer itself is always vegan, you just have to watch out for little dumb stuff like the brand Bitburger using Milk-based glue for the labels on their glass beer bottles.
That is not true.
Filtrate medium is not considered to be an ingredient, nor are additives that are removed by filtration except for technically impossible residue. This most notably includes PVPP as a coagulation agents to remove polyphenols which otherwise could help in the formation of haze when the beer is stored improperly or over longer times.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvinylpolypyrrolidone
So no, beer in Germany does not have to be vegan by default.
PVPP is vegan though, but isinglass isn’t
I know. It is just that there is articles every now and then that complain about “plastic in beer” and reference the fact that this is not a violation of the German purity law.
Does PVPP come from animal products? Everything I could find about it suggests petrochemicals. Which is technically vegan. *ahem* “Vegan leather” *ahem*.
It is not an animal product. It came to my mind as an example because every other year or so i see articles complaining about “plastic in beer” being allowed in Germany.
Using isinglass, which comes from fish, for filtration is not common in industrial breweries in Germany, but it also isn’t prohibited. Industrial breweries mostly use diatomaceous earth filters. So in a first step they mix the beer with the PVPP so that coagulation can occur. Water is mixed with diatomaceous earth and run through a filter sieve, where the diatomaceous earth is retained and forms a filter cake and then the beer is run through that filter, removing almost all of the PVPP.
A similar process can be done using the isinglass instead of the PVPP and using isinglass is more common for filtration of wine.
So most beer probably is vegan (aside from the traces of insects and rodents that made it into the grain-silo), but there is no legal guarantee that every product made according to the German purity law is vegan.
They sneak gelatin into so many things too. One that got me for a year or two after I went vegetarian was Altoids. I liked to keep em in my car to have something to munch/occupy myself while driving, and never even thought to check the ingredients. How could mints have animal in em? Turns out they have gelatin! I honestly never miss meat or anything, but I do miss gelatin to a degree. Not because I want gelatin in particular, but it’s in so many tasty things, and vegetarian gummies and the like are always so expensive ;_;
Also milk powder and whey - there’s so many god damn chips where you go “why the fuck does that need milk powder?”
i was about to recommend katyes, because they are great and cost like 1€ a bag in local stores, but apparently, thats 5€ on amazon (fuck amazon), so unless u can get them locally, thats not exactly a good option :<
Damn, I didn’t know about the sugar and beer. Guess i gotta look up what I’m drinking
This will help
https://www.barnivore.com/
But yeah beer is weird. Some places use some weird shit as filtering agents
Thanks :)