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Comment by Nursie | Hacker News Reader

The skewed view given in the article is hilarious.

"Nobody really wants to advertise that they filter their beer through dead fish"

Well that would be because they don't. Isinglass has a long history of use in beer and wine, and is a refined collagen. If you don't want animal products in beer, awesome, go for it. The slightly hysterical language is unnecessary though.

-- edit -- Another technique sometimes used is to fine with beef gelatin... Not sure how widespread this is commercially, but it seems relatively popular with homebrewers. Vegetarians do need to be careful with beer.

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> Vegetarians do need to be careful with beer.

Vegetarians may wish to be careful with beer. Some vegetarians aren't ideological/religious about it, and some that are draw lines in different places.

Quite right, people are vegetarian for a variety of reasons, and draw the line in different place!

It's worth noting that good results can be achieved with proper temperature control and irish moss, isinglass is not always needed. Also many/most keg beers are filtered rather than fined.

Vegans, on the other hand, draw a very simple line, with very simple (and powerful) rationale.

Yes, Vegans have the moral highground and none of their dietary choices are detrimental to cute little animals.

Well, maybe simple, but their rationale is nowhere near powerful in a lot of people's minds.

As cited in http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/10/11/why-drunk-v...:

> Another survey from the USDA, also conducted by phone, put the [proportion] of vegetarians who’ve eaten meat in the last day at about two-thirds.

That's really weird. At that point who are you trying to convince that you're a vegetarian? These are people who apparently aren't even trying to be vegetarian. I can understand people who'd claim to have a preference to not eating meat, but two-thirds in the last day is ridicules.

I where a vegetarian for 12 year, without having any real reason, other than I felt like it. Even at my most drunk I could always remember that I didn't eat meat.

Two-thirds... damn that's stupid. "I really want to be a vegetarian, because fluffy cows, but OMG cheese burger". Some people are weird.

My thoughts exactly. I laughed out loud a couple of times at the hysteria permeating this article.

>Isinglass has a long history of use in beer and wine, and is a refined collagen.

A long history before modern manufacture of crappy commercial beers?

Here's a quote from 1760[1]:

“I well remember for many years it was not expected, nor was it thought possible [for porter] to be made fine and bright, and four and five months was deemed to be sufficient age for it to be drunk at. The improvement of transparency has since been added to it by means of more and better workmanship, better malt, better hops and the use of isinglass.”

[1] http://tempestinatankard.com/2013/11/21/of-isinglass-and-oth...

It goes back to 1722 which is very recent in beer terms. People where making beer 5,000 years ago.

Where did you get the 1722 number from? I've never found a good source on when the process started?

But still when people are talking about the beginning of "modern manufacture of crappy commercial beers" I think it's safe to assume that they are at the very least talking about brewing after the discovery of the role of yeast in brewing and the control that that offered to the process, which is still 100 years after the quote I gave was made.

I believe that it's likely to be too expensive for use in most crappy commercial beers, which are likely to be heavily filtered instead.

Some of the language in the article is a bit strange:

"Its stance means Marble is one of a handful of breweries to be approved by the Vegetarian Society, something that's earned it a loyal following."

'Handful' is completely meaningless in this context. How can a brewery fit into a hand? The actual list is also quite long and by no means exhaustive: http://www.vegsocapproved.com/ProductCategory/Details/126?pa...

Especially when you consider a lot of craft breweries are using vegetarian friendly techniques for clarifying their brews.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/handful

> 2: a small quantity or number <a handful of people>

How can a person fit into a hand?

Alternatively, when were you given the power to decide what words should mean in a language you claim not to be familiar with?

Am I not allowed to criticise language usage?

I'm making two points, it's a poor choice of word, as it is conceptually poor, even bordering on nonsense. It's also clearly the wrong word as evidenced by the long list I provided.

You are allowed to criticize language usage. Others are allowed to point out that you do so in a rather silly fashion.

English, like almost any natural language, is rich in metaphor. If that's not your cup of tea, fine. But it's probably worth learning to roll with the punches, just the same. Is this really the hill you want to die on?

If I said "a handful of breweries" to you, how many would you take that to mean? Words like these can skew meaning greatly, and are inaccurate. I'm criticising because it wouldn't take much effort to indicate with more skill exactly what the state of things is. It's a careless use of words, in my opinion, which I don't expect from a writer of a factual news article. I'd be ok with it in casual usage.

It's also a shame that you and the other poster are focussing on this rather than the fact that the statement is plainly wrong. There are clearly more than a 'few' veggie-friendly brewers.

Perhaps your claim of fact is being ignored due to its highly dubious nature. That's a list of beers, not of brewers, and even on the first page we see multiple products from a single brewery in a few different cases. The list also appears to be somewhere between 126 and 150 items in length, unless they're making that annoying pagination mistake where you don't give any clue to the true length.

So what you've cited in support of your argument in fact militates pretty strongly against it, because a hundred or so breweries isn't a very large subset of all those in the UK - according to CAMRA, that's a total of 1424, which puts the fraction on your list somewhere around seven percent. That's a little strong for my taste, but still a good beer. It is also, one might dare say, a relative handful.

It's why I said that it's not a full list. It's only 'approved' beers. There's loads that I could name off the top of my head not in that list.

This is a better list, which puts the number at closer to 50% if you use the filter 'England' and then toggle between Vegan and Everything: http://www.barnivore.com/beer?vfilter=All

You link to a list of all the approved beers, not the approved breweries. Each brewery is responsible for multiple beers.

There are a lots and lots of beers that are vegan friendly as evidenced by this much better list: http://www.barnivore.com/beer?vfilter=All

I think people reading this article will come away with a view that only 5 or 6 breweries in the UK are producing vegan friendly beer, and that' clearly not the case. Lots of breweries are doing it. It's probably fairer to say 1 in 2 beers are vegan friendly

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