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Is Alcohol Vegan? An Investigation into the Secret Life of Your Favorite Party Potion

  • Writer: Emanuele Bortolotto
    Emanuele Bortolotto
  • Jul 16
  • 7 min read

Updated: Sep 6


It’s late on a Saturday night here in Helsinki, a time when many of the city’s inhabitants are out participating in one of humanity’s oldest and most sacred rituals: getting a bit tipsy. 🍻 Alcohol. It’s the magical elixir that fuels the best dance moves, the worst decisions, and the entire global karaoke industry. It is a social lubricant, a celebratory toast, a quiet companion on a lonely evening.


But for the modern, ethically-minded individual, this simple pleasure is fraught with peril. As an investigator of the world, I have discovered that almost every seemingly simple food product is secretly a philosophical minefield. And alcohol, it turns out, is one of the most treacherous minefields of all. You’re at a party, sipping on what you assume is a harmless glass of wine, and then a terrifying thought creeps in: what if this isn’t vegan?

The question itself seems absurd. Wine comes from grapes. Beer comes from grains. Vodka comes from potatoes. These are all plants. So, is alcohol vegan? I decided to launch a full-scale investigation, a journey into the frothy, fizzy, and occasionally gruesome world of booze. What I found was a conspiracy of silence, a shocking lack of transparency, and a surprising number of fish bladders.



The Magic of Yeast Poop: What Is Alcohol, Anyway?


Before we can get into the conspiracy, I think it’s important to understand the basics. What is alcohol? I’ve read a lot of very clever chemistry books on this, and I’ve decided they make it sound much more complicated than it needs to be. The process is called fermentation, and it is, in essence, a magical party thrown by a single-celled fungus called yeast. 🥳


Here’s how it works:

  1. You take a sugary liquid. This can be grape juice, barley water, or even just a big vat of sugar water.

  2. You introduce yeast. The yeast, a tiny and very hungry organism, looks at all this sugar and thinks it has died and gone to heaven.

  3. The yeast then proceeds to eat the sugar. And after it eats the sugar, it… well, it excretes two waste products. One of these is carbon dioxide, the bubbles that make beer fizzy and champagne fancy. The other is ethanol, the magical molecule that we call alcohol.


So, from a purely scientific and slightly childish perspective, all alcohol is just the processed poop of a very happy fungus. As an investigator, I was relieved to discover that yeast, being a fungus, is not an animal. It does not have a brain, a central nervous system, or a favorite member of the Beatles. So pure, distilled ethanol is, by its very nature, vegan. The problem, as always, is not with the core product. It’s with what humans do to it afterwards.



The Great Clarification Conspiracy: A Field Guide to Fining Agents


This is where my investigation took a dark and murky turn. The problem is that after fermentation, many alcoholic beverages are a bit cloudy. They are full of leftover yeast particles, proteins, and other microscopic gunk. Now, this cloudy liquid is perfectly fine to drink, but it doesn't look very pretty. And in our modern world of crystal-clear aesthetics, a cloudy pint is an unsellable pint.


To solve this problem, producers use a process called fining. This involves dumping a special agent into the vat of booze. This fining agent is like a tiny, microscopic bouncer. It grabs all the undesirable cloudy particles and drags them down to the bottom of the tank, leaving the final product looking sparkly, clear, and Instagram-ready. ✨ And what are these heroic bouncers made of? Well, this is where the horror story begins.

My investigation has compiled a rogues' gallery of the most common, and most non-vegan, fining agents used in the industry.


Isinglass: The Fish Bladder Nightmare 🐟


This is the most famous and most gruesome of them all. Isinglass is a type of collagen that is derived from the dried swim bladders of fish, usually sturgeon. Let me repeat that, just so we are all on the same, horrified page. To make some of the world's most famous beers and wines crystal clear, they are filtered through the dessicated internal organs of a fish.



Gelatin: The Wobbly Ghost of the Farm 🐷


This is another common fining agent, especially in wine. And as I've investigated before, gelatin is made by boiling the skin, bones, and connective tissues of cows and pigs.10 So, your crisp, clear glass of Sauvignon Blanc might have been clarified by the boiled-down ghost of a pig. It’s a thought that can certainly ruin a nice cheese and wine evening (even if the cheese is vegan).


Albumin & Casein: The Breakfast Club of Betrayal


These are two other popular fining agents for wine. Albumin is simply egg whites. Casein is the main protein found in milk. While perhaps less gruesome than fish bladders and boiled bones, they are still, obviously, animal products.



A Category-by-Category Interrogation: Which Drinks Are Safe?


So, given this minefield of hidden animal parts, how is a person supposed to navigate a bar? I decided to investigate each of the major beverage categories.


Wine: A Minefield of Grapes and Guilt 🍇


Wine is the most treacherous category. The tradition of using fining agents like gelatin, egg whites, and isinglass is very old and very widespread. The problem is that for the most part, wine producers are not legally required to list their fining agents on the label. A bottle of Merlot could have been filtered through a fish bladder, and you would have absolutely no way of knowing.


The good news is that the industry is changing. The rise of veganism has led to a huge increase in wines that are explicitly labeled "Vegan." These wines are usually fined using plant-based or mineral alternatives, like bentonite clay or activated charcoal. Organic and natural wines also tend to avoid animal-based fining agents, but it's not a guarantee.



Beer: A Frothy, and Often Fishy, Friend 🍺


Beer is another complicated one. The use of isinglass is particularly common in traditional British cask ales. However, my investigation revealed some good news. Most modern, mass-produced lagers from around the world (think Budweiser, Heineken, Corona) are vegan. The German Purity Law of 1516, the Reinheitsgebot, which dictates that beer can only be made from water, barley, and hops, also means that most German beers are vegan by default. Furthermore, the modern craft beer movement has largely moved away from using isinglass.



Spirits: The Clear Champions (Usually) 🥃


This is the safest territory for a vegan drinker. For the most part, distilled spirits—like vodka, gin, whiskey, rum, and tequila—are vegan. The process of distillation itself is a highly effective method of purification. Even if a fining agent were used in the initial mash (which is rare), the distillation process of evaporating and re-condensing the alcohol would leave it behind.


The danger with spirits comes after distillation. You have to be on the lookout for:

  • Cream Liqueurs: The most famous example is Baileys Irish Cream, which is made with dairy cream. (Though they now make a vegan almond-based version!)


  • Honey Liqueurs: Many whiskeys and other spirits have honey-flavored versions, like Jack Daniel's Tennessee Honey.


  • Weird Additives: Some flavored vodkas or novelty liqueurs can contain strange, non-vegan ingredients. And you have to watch out for Campari, the famous red liqueur in a Negroni, which for many years got its red color from crushed cochineal insects. They have since changed their formula, and it is now vegan. But it’s a good reminder to always be suspicious of brightly colored liquids. ❤️



Questions from the Internet: "Why on earth is this not on the label? It seems insane."


I agree. It is insane. My investigation into the labyrinth of global food and beverage labeling laws revealed a frustrating truth: in most countries, alcoholic beverages are simply not regulated with the same rigor as food. There are historical and legal loopholes that mean producers are not required to disclose the "processing aids" they use, like fining agents, because they are not considered "ingredients" in the final product. It is a system that seems almost designed to be confusing and opaque. 🤫


Questions from the Internet: "Is there an easy way to check if my drink is vegan?"


Yes! Thank the heavens, there is. My investigation has led me to what I now consider to be one of the most important websites on the entire internet for a vegan drinker: Barnivore.com. This is a massive, crowd-sourced, and constantly updated database of over 50,000 alcoholic beverages. You just type in the name of your beer, wine, or spirit, and it will tell you if it is vegan-friendly or not. It is an absolutely essential tool. Bookmark it. Use it. It will save you from accidentally drinking fish guts. ✅


Internal Link Break!


The great honey debate is a perfect example of how a seemingly simple, "natural" product can be a philosophical minefield for vegans. I've done a full, deep, and slightly sticky investigation into that very topic right here: [Is Honey Vegan? (And Why That Question Can Start Fights)].


The Conclusion: Drink with Knowledge (and a Smartphone)


So, after this deep and slightly sobering investigation, is alcohol vegan?

My final verdict is a deeply unsatisfying, "it depends." It depends on the drink, it depends on the producer, and it depends on how deep you are willing to go into the rabbit hole of industrial processing.

The good news is that with a little bit of knowledge and a good app, it is easier than ever to navigate the bar and the bottle shop with confidence. The world is full of delicious, high-quality, and completely vegan booze. You do not have to give up your evening glass of wine or your celebratory pint. You just have to be a little bit more of a detective. 🕵️‍♀️

The bad news is that you will now, for the rest of your life, be haunted by the knowledge that some of the world's most famous drinks are filtered through the bladders of dead fish. You’re welcome. 😉

Of course, the ethics of your drink are just one part of the story. The health implications of what is actually in your glass are a whole other investigation. For a deep dive into the surprising world of vegan cocktails, check out my report: [Vegan Cocktails: Boozy Sips Without Hidden Dairy].


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