Mmmonday: Is Your Favorite Drink Vegan?

Happy Monday morning, y’all!

Just like the rest of the week, my Monday posts will center around a theme. I'm calling them #Mmmondays, a nod to my love for Hanson as well as the ubiquitous "mmm" noise that means damn, that's tasty! On Mmmondays, I'll feature posts about food and drink. I’ll be sharing recipes, restaurant reviews, product reviews and suggestions, and that sort of thing. 

Today, I'm kicking things off with what I hope you'll find to be some helpful beverage-related information.

There are as many misconceptions about vegan foods/drinks as there are about vegans, and one of the more common ones is that all booze is vegan. The good news is that some beer, wine, and liquor is vegan—a lot of it is, in fact. But some is very not vegan.

Some kinds of alcoholic drinks are made using animal-derived products which, though they rarely if ever end up in the finished product, renders them firmly NOT vegan. Guinness, for example, is one of the most well-known beers to use isinglass (which comes from fish’s swim bladders—ew!) in the brewing process.

Many wines use animal products or ingredients, too. In fact, it’s been my experience that it’s harder to find vegan wine than it is to find vegan beer or liquor. (Some Yellow Tail wines are vegan though, including their cabernet sauvignon, which is my favorite and pretty much the only wine I ever buy.)

Now, before you get all bummed out thinking that you have this new hurdle to clear, as if you didn’t have enough already, I have some more good news for you: you don’t have to do all the research yourself!

Luckily for all of us, there is a fantastic website called Barnivore that is basically a big database of boozy products and whether or not they’re vegan. So, instead of having to contact all your favorite breweries/distilleries/wineries yourself, you can just type in the beverage you’re wondering about and—Bingo!—it tells you whether it’s vegan or not.

Barnivore.com Home Page | Screenshot from Barnivore.com

It’s a pretty comprehensive database, too, so even though some microbrews are missing (for now) they do an excellent job of covering the common and popular products that you’re most likely to encounter in a restaurant, grocery store, or other booze-buying establishment.

Sample Search Results Page | Screenshot from Barnivore.com

My personal advice? Take 5-10 minutes to do some recon on your favorite drinks. I did and was pleased to find that almost every single one of my go-tos was vegan. Now, I can go out and order my favorite beers and whiskeys with confidence.

Sample Detail Page | Screenshot from Barnivore.com
* FYI: almost every other Stoli product IS vegan :) *

I hope you find Barnivore to be as helpful a resource as I do. If you’ve tried it, let me know what you thought.

And feel free to share your favorite vegan beer, wine, and liquor recommendations in the comments!