Last Updated: 2008-06-05 04:21:35

What's wrong with alcohol?

Putting aside arguments about health, many beers, wines and other alcoholic beverages are filtered with animal ingredients such as isinglass (derived from fish) or bone char. While the filtering process only leaves trace animal residues in the final product, the fact that animal products are used at all leaves many beverages off of the vegan drinker's shopping list. To make matters worse, some drinks are simply not vegan by virtue of their ingredients, as cream, eggs, and even whole chickens can be added to a drink to give it a distinctive flavour or property.

The trouble is, this isn't something you'll find on a label.

What can I do?

We've started the Vegan Booze Directory to help you build a proper vegan bar, but we need a bit of help. Alcohol, especially beer, is incredibly regional, and the odds are that your favourite brand isn't even available in other parts of the world. Combined with the sheer number of drinks out there, it's clear that we need more than one or two people to build the list.

We need volunteers in the following areas:

Drinkers

This is the easiest thing in the world - if you're drinking something right now, email us with the name of the product and some contact information (a phone number or email address) and we'll add it to the directory.

Ingredient Checkers

If a product is in the directory but the status is unknown, we need people to contact the company and ask the following questions:

1) Are any animal products such as isinglass or gelatin (for beer and wine) or bone char (for liquor) used to filter the product?

2) Are there any animal ingredients such as dairy, egg, or honey in the product itself?

Once you've got the answers, email us with the information. If you don't want your name listed in the directory with your findings, please mention that in your email.

Double Checkers

To ensure accuracy, we'd like someone else to verify the results found by the Ingredient Checkers. If you see a product that hasn't been double checked, repeat the above steps and let us know what you find out.

The Directory

Here's the list we have so far. It really doesn't take long to check out your favourite drink, but even if you don't want to go that far, just getting the product on the list might prompt someone else in your area to check it out for you, so please, any way you can help out will make it easier for everyone.

Special thanks to our booze list editing team: Rory Reiff, Erica Julien, Steph (two Stephs!) and Danielle!