Artisan Vegan Beers (the best brands to choose)

Many beers are made with fish bladder and bones, so here is a list of the best vegan artisan beers on the market. Switch over, whether it’s for you or you run a pub, restaurant or hotel!

Toast Brewing is made with upcycled bread!

Most no-alcohol spirits are mixed with tonic water, and quinine should be avoided for some medical conditions (and pregnancy/nursing). Also check medication before consuming grapefruit or rhubarb tonic waters. Keep citrus fruit garnishes away from pets.

For glass bottles, cork is too dense to compost, so recycle at off licenses or send off in bulk to Recorked (don’t leave them lying around, they are choking hazards).

Before recycling cans, rinse then pop ring-pulls over holes. Then use your fingers/thumb to ‘pinch’ inner rims together, to avoid wildlife getting trapped. 

Why Drinking Toast Brewing Beer Helps Fight Food Waste

Toast Brewing is a unique brand of beer brewed in Staffordshire, which replaces around 25% of malted barley in their brewing recipes with surplus bread from bakeries, to help prevent food waste.

Around 44% of bread bought in England is simply thrown away. So far it’s saved over 4 million slices from going to landfill.

Is the packaging zero waste?

The cans are made from aluminium, printed to avoid the need for labels.

To avoid wildlife getting stuck in cans, rinse then pop the ring-pulls back over holes. Then step on top end of cans (this pinches inner rims together, to make cans inaccessible to inquisitive creatures). 

In the hospitality industry, labels are typically plastic due to set bottling and canning lines, and condensation from moving between ambient and chilled environments. Call your council or provide for appropriate recycling advice.

How does bread waste help to make beer?

The bread replaces around 25% of malted barley. The malt has enzymes that change starches in the bread to simple sugars, so yeast can convert them to alcohol and carbon dioxide. Before adding hops to preserve the beer, and give aroma and bitterness.

Toast Brewing buys surplus bread (often the ‘heels’ that are not used in sandwiches) from bakeries at lower cost, the discount funding their food safety requirements. Many types of bread are used, but some cannot be used like focacca (too high in oil) and some sourdough bread (too high in salt). Due to being made with bread, the beers are not gluten-free.

The brand was founded by food waste campaigner Tristram Stuart, who holds a Golden Share, to protect the mission of the company. 100% of profits help support his campaigns to prevent food waste worldwide (there is enough food thrown out each day, to feed everyone on earth).

Don’t give stale/mouldy/crusty bread to garden birds or wildlife, as it could choke (fat also smears on feathers, affecting waterproofing/insulation).

Are Toast Beers vegan?

Yes they are! Unlike some beers that filter beers with bone char or isinglass (fish bladder), all Toast Beers are vegan-friendly.

The Range of Toast Brewing Beers

There is just a small range of three beers (plus an alcohol-free version below).

Rise Up Lager

This is a refreshing Helles-style beer with English hops – clean and crisp.

Grassroots Pale Ale 

This is a hazy pale ale with tropical flavours of passionfruit, peach and pineapple.

New Dawn Session IPA

This beer features citrus and floral notes, a punch beer made with modern American hops.

Changing Tides is the 0.5% beer (no beer can be called 0% as even bread and fruit has a little alcohol).  This is a refreshing mix of citrus and spice, made with surplus bread, malted barley and English hops.

You can’t get drunk on it, though experts recommend that pregnant/nursing women still avoid any beer, due to the tiny amounts of alcohol, just to be safe. 

You can buy online as single beer types or mixed cases (free delivery for orders over £40), with discounts for regular subscriptons. You can also search online for stockists including independent off licenses and Waitrose branches.

Crumbs Brewing (another brand made with breast waste

Crumbs Brewing is also made with upcycled bread waste

Stroud Brewing is made in Gloucestershire

Fauna brewing helps endangered species

Brass castle brewery is in Yorkshire

Brewgooder (vegan beer to fund water projects)

Brewgooder is a Glasgow-based vegan beer with a difference. Because it uses profits to fund clean water projects abroad, for the millions of people who can get thirsty, sick or even die from dehydration or dirty water. The founder actually became ill from contracting a parasite from contaminated water. This was inspiration for founding the brand.

Back home, he recovered thanks to NHS treatment, and realised that clean water is a human right, and used his business knowledge to found a company that could do good work abroad. So far Brewgooder has provided over 150 million litres of clean water, to people around the world. Some examples are:

• Funded over 130 projects in Malawi (including well rehabilitations, borehole constructions and water mapping, which has impacted over 65,000 lives).
• Supported initiatives that tackle food poverty and homelessness in the UK.
• Fund a scholarship for ethnic minority students in the brewing/distilling industry.
• Supported conflict-affected communities, providing aid in areas like Gaza.

Most Work Done in Malawi

Most of the profits from this brand go to fund clean water projects in Malawi, ‘the warm heart of Africa’, in a landlocked friendly nation. Yet despite a fifth of the country being covered by Lake Malawi, a third of people have no access to clean safe water, due to poor infrastructure and most being used for agriculture.

Around 40% of treated water is also lost each year to theft, illegal connections and leaky pipes.

More than half the population (around 10 million people) lack access to decent toilets, and over 1000 children under 5, die annually from diarrhoea (caused by unsafe water and poor sanitation).

Two huge reasons for lack of clean water are droughts and floods (which causes dirty water) which are being made worse by climate change. This is the problem when media don’t call out politicians who are denying climate science and ripping up climate policies. It’s innocent people in poverty-stricken countries who end up the biggest losers. 

You can find Brewgooder beers in many shops and supermarkets (including Tesco), pubs and restaurants. Or buy online (including mixed cases):

These beers are naturally vegan (no bone or fish finings).

• Sun and Stone (this is made alongside a pioneering Palestinian microbrewery, inspired by the region’s warm sun and rugged limestone hills). It’s a crisp lager with German hops, with artwork by Levantine artist Nouri Flayhan. All proceeds support communities in Palestine and across the Middle East, including through the work of the Disasters Emergency Committee.
• Goood Beer (a session pale ale with refreshing finish)
• Tropic (a pale ale with flavours of mango & passion fruit)
• IPA (an Indian pale ale with flavours of grapefruit & lime)
• Juicy (a citrus IPA with pineapple & lemon aromas)
• APA (a piney American pale ale)
• Fonio (a Fair Trade IPA brewed with ancient grain sourced from smallholder farmers in West Africa).