Friday 24 February 2012

A problem with alcohol.

VP:


I’m staring at a barman that looks so much younger than 25, I should have asked him for ID before buying any alcohol.  I’ve got to ask, it’s his job.

“I’m fairly certain Beer hasn’t got any meat in it mate!” He says, intelligently.

I knew this would come up.  It was actually part of the reason I took on the challenge.  I’d accepted that the onus was on me to know my stuff and I even had some back up options in case of emergencies.  But since there were none of my known Vegan beers on tap and no phone signal to check barnivore.com/beer - I had optimistically put the question to him. 

Sadly he had no clue about what was available to me or why most options unfortunately weren’t.  I was left with no choice but to leave the pub and check the web in the rain.

Converse to this, I’d actually been in the pub the night before and once again none of my acceptable drinks were there.  Now I accept that this is not the best testament to the variety in my social life or my knowledge of Vegan allies.  But in my defence it was a different pub, and the Carlsberg was off.  On this occasion, I just went straight ahead and asked the question.

“None I’m afraid mate, they’ve all got fish guts in.” the barman replied.

Now It’s fair to say that I wasn’t expecting this.  I had in fact, already started checking the web, but the fish guts reference was a little too educated a response to simply ignore and it completely threw me.

I’ve got to admire his research.  Many UK Breweries filter using Isinglass, made from the swim bladders of fish, which speeds up the process of separating the live yeast from the beer. 

Thankfully upon further investigation, it turns out my educated friend was a little over-enthusiastic, and fortunately, I can add another Beer to my list.  Despite it’s origins in the fishing port of Osaka, it turns out Asahi, is in fact Vegan.

So I’m stuck between barstaff that think they know, and barstaff that quite simply haven’t got a clue. 

And my alternatives?  Well wine is often filtered through hoof gelatine, Vodka is filtered through Bone charcoal and as we all know, Guiness is made almost entirely from Beef steak.

So perhaps I’ll stick to soft drinks.

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