The best brands of artisan vegan beers

Toast Brewing

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

Before recycling cans, rinse then pop ring-pulls over holes. Step on upper cans to ‘pinch’ inner rims together, to stop wildlife getting trapped. 

Due to being made with bread, the beers are not gluten-free.

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

Toast Brewing

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).

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

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

The range includes:

Toast Brewing

  • Rise Up Lager – a refreshing Helles-style beer with English hops
  • Grassroots Pale Ale – a hazy pale ale with tropical flavours of passionfruit, peach and pineapple.
  • New Dawn Session IPA – citrus and floral notes, with American hops.
  • Changing Tides – 0.5% beer (citrus and spicem malted barley and English hops. Experts say due to tiny amounts of alcohol in any beer (even fruit and bread contain a little), pregnant/nursing women are still best avoiding it, 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. Also find stockists online (sold in many off licenses and Waitrose).

Crumbs Brewing (vegan beers made with bakery waste)

Crumbs Brewing

Crumbs Brewing is a unique beer in Surrey, made with bread waste from local bakeries. made with upcycled bread waste. So far it’s saved over 1/2 million slices of bread from  going in the bin (44% of bread bought in the UK never gets eaten). 

The range includes:

  • Bloomin’ amber lager
  • Naan lager
  • Sourdough session IPA
  • Rye ruby ale.

Stroud Brewing (vegan organic beers from Gloucestershire)

Stroud Brewery

Stroud Brewing is made in Gloucestershire, all their beers are vegan and organic. This brand has been organic since 2008, and says that better soil makes better beer. The farms it partners with have at least 30% more plant, insect and bird life.

Stroud Brewery

The range includes:

Taster boxes and bag-in-a-box for events

  • Pale or amble ale
  • Amber lager
  • Lol Light-tasting lager
  • India pale ale
  • Vegan stout
  • Shift Happens (0.5 pale ale). Experts say due to tiny amounts of alcohol in any beer (even fruit and bread contain a little), pregnant/nursing women are still best avoiding it, just to be safe. 

Stroud Brewery stout

Brass Castle vegan beers (from Yorkshire)

Brass castle brewery

Brass castle brewery is in Yorkshire is a reputable brand, all are vegan. They are also  gluten-free, with a tiny amount of vegan enzyme breaking down during fermentations that breaks down gluten without affecting taste (at time of writing, each beer is tested at certified labs).

All spent grain and hops from brewing are repurposed, to create biogas and fertilisers, or sent to local allotments to nourish the soil.

The range includes:

  • Helles lager
  • Pale ale
  • IPA
  • Vanilla porter
  • Tropical sour
  • Grapefruit IPA (check medication)
  • Strawberry lime sour

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