Here is a very general listing of various recipies that I have used constantly throughout the years are all vegan and easy to make with Ingredients you'll find in your local area. Vegan drinking Well Cork city's finest "Beamish" is my all time favourite vegan stout and having gotten into brewing my own beers many years ago,(no wonder my stomach is constantly complaining) I had many many articles in the zine on 'vegan drinking' homebrew and stupid cider reviews. But alot of that just wouldn't be interesting enough to put on the website. The vegan society in the U.K. has a great pocket book of things vegan and has a nice bit on vegan drink, also Ak press printed up a book listing the differant beers, wines etc that are vegan. Theres some great sites on homebrewing on the net, but heres a piece about vegan beer. I'll update this page as much as possible with recipes for homebrew etc. Well first off heres a list of beers that are suitable for vegans> Cider The real core of finding a vegan cider, is to find one which has been naturally fermented. Gelatin, isinglass, chitin (crab shells) and collagen is used by some companies to get rid that cloudy look in the cider, so it looks clear in the glass. Some homebrew kits also sell these to clear the look of cloud from your homebrew, but all its doing is adding chemicals. Ak press listed the well known ciders "Woodpecker", "Strongbow", "Scrumpy Jack", "Symonds" and "Taunton Cider" all use animal derived clarifying agents, and although they stress that these are removed during the final stages of production, The Vegetarian Society would nonetheless class them as unsuitable for vegetarians. Vegetarian ciders are usually naturally fermented in large oak barrels and allowed to settle over a period of months (the longer, the better, as this not only makes the cider clearer, but also stronger!). Bentonite clay when mined and specially prepared for clarification purposes can also be used, or alternatively cellulose filter sheets. Wine The problem with the majority of wine in your local shop more than likely has isinglass, gel, egg albumen (from battery eggs), chitin or even ox blood added as fining agents. Your best bet is the organic wines as they're more likely to be vegetarian. Beer Cask-conditioned ales need fining to clear the material (especially the yeast) held in suspension in the liquid. This is invariably done by adding isinglass, derived from the swim bladders of certain tropical fish, especially the Chinese sturgeon, which acts as a falling suspension. If you were to hold a pint of real ale up to the light and see cloudy lumps swirling around that would suggest that the cask had been recently disturbed and the isinglass shaken up from the bottom. Naturally bottled conditioned beers will not always have been treated with isinglass. Keg beers and Lagers are pasteurized and usually passed through Chill Filters, as are canned beers and some bottled beers. However, a considerable number of breweries still use isinglass to clear their pasturized beers, though sometimes only to rescue selected batches which are considered too hazey. Also occasionally the sometimes animal derived additive Glyceryl Monostearate is used in place of 900 Dimethylpolysiloxane as a foam-control agent in the production of keg beers. Making your own Dandelion wine Basic instructions for making beer homebrew made by U.S. crust punx Destroy Make your own cider The production of spirits does not appear to involve the use of animal substances (Vodka is now filtered using birchwood charcoal). Wines Most wines on sale in off-licences and supermarkets have been fined using one of the following: Blood, bone marrow, chitin (organic base of the hard parts of insects and crustacea such as shrimps and crabs), egg albumen (egg white), fish oil, gelatin(e) (jelly obtained by boiling animal tissues such as skin, tendons, legaments, etc or bones), isinglass, milk or milk casein. Non-animal alternatives include limestone, bentonite, kaolin and kieslguhr (clays), plant casein, silica gel, and vegetable plaques. Vegan Products Beers/lagers: Whitbread Kaltenberg Pils, Heineken Export Lager, Labatt Blue Lager, Labatt Ice Lager; Scottish Courage Beck's Bier [keg, bottle], Budweiser [keg, can, bottle], Coors Extra Gold [keg, can, bottle], Holsten Pils [keg, can, bottle]; Grolsch Grolsch [keg, 450ml swingtop bottle] (not the 250ml, 275ml bottles or 500ml cans) Ciders: Merrydown Pulse: White; Shloer: Apple, Peach, Red Grape, Summer Fruits, White Grape; Vintage: Dry, Medium Spirits & Aperitifs: International Distillers all Croft Sherries, Cockspur Rum, Cointreau, Croft Vintage Port, Gilbeys Gin, J&B Scotch Whisky, Jack Daniels, Malibu, Metaxa, Popov Vodka, Romana Sambuca, Sapphire Gin, Singleton Whisky, Smirnoff Vodkas, Southern Comfort; Safeways all spirits Nettle beer (Make sure the nettles are from an unpolluted place. Pick the fresh growth) Normally, even if you live in the city center, the suburbs you'll find nettles near where you live and I haven't a clue in knowing wild plants but I know a nettle when I see one! Anyway as I say make sure you pick the nettles from an unpolluted place. Its the young nettles you should be picking. Ingredients 2lb young nettle tops 1 gallon of water 8oz of sugar 0.25oz of fresh yeast small piece of toast 0.25oz of ground ginger Put the young fresh tops are boiled in a gallon of water for half an hour. Strain and add juice of 2 lemons, a teaspoonful of crushed ginger and 1 Lb. of sugar.(you can if you like add 4 handsful of Dandelion) Then put some fresh yeast floating on the surface. Cover and leave for 3 days. Strain again and put into bottles. Blackberry wine 4lbs of blackberries 3lbs of suger 1 lemon 1 pectin enzyme 1 gallon of water wine yeast yeast nutrient Blackberries are fairly easy to spot and of course free for picking Wash the blackberries throughly to remove any maggots. Put into the fementing vessel, crush well and cover with 6 pints of boiling water. When cool add the pectin enzyme and leave to steep for 24 hours. Bring a further 2 pints of water to the boil and dissolve the sugar in it. Cool to blood heat and add to the blackberry pulp together with yeast and nutrient and the juice of the lemon. Cover the vessel and leave to ferment in a warm place for 3 days, stirring twice daily. Strain the liquid off the pulp and transfer to a fermenting jar. Close off with air-lock and leave to ferment on, racking when the wine starts to clear. When all fermentation has ceased and the wine cleared, bottle and store in a cool dark place to mature for at least 6 months. You can also mix in other fruits like apple, elderberry, rosehip or sloe. Banana wine 4lbs of bananas 2 banana skins 3lbs of suger 1 lemon 1 orange 1 orange 1/2 tsp grape tannin ceral wine yeast yeast nutrient Peel the bananas abd slice into 1 gallon of water with a little thinly peeled citrus rind(avoiding the white pith) and the banna skins. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 30 minutes. Strain the liquid on to the suger, pressing the banana pulp well to extract as much moisture as posssible. Stir well to dissolve the sugar. Leave until comfotably warm, then add the yeast and nutrient, the chopped raisins, grape tannin and juice of the citrus fruits. Cover and leave in a warm place to ferment for 7 days, stirring twice daily. Strain the liquid off the pulp and transfer to a fermenting jar. Close off with an air-lock and leave to ferment on, racking when the wine begins to clear. When all fermentation has ceased and the wine has cleared completely, bottle and store in a cool dark place to mature for at least 6 months. And even more banana wine 1lbs of bananas 2 tsp wine yeast For up to 3 gallons(15 litres) 2 pints(5 cups) grape concentrate(red or white) lemon 1 lb refined granulated sugar 1 tsp yeast nutrient 2 vitamin B tablets Plus for each gallon(5 litres) 5-6 weeks to ferment and mature. 1 Activate the yeast: i.e. half fill a small bottle with hand-warm water, add the wine yeast, shake well, stop with a cotton-wool bung and put it in a warm place. Peel and slice the bananas, put the flesh in a bowl (discard the skins), pour boiling water over, cover and set aside. Put the grape concentrate in a warm place too. Leave for 5-6 hours. 2 Put half the sugar in a suitable fermentation vessel and add enough hot water to dissolve it completely. Strain in the liquid from the bananas (discard the flesh). Add the grape concentrate. Make up the liquid to your chosen amount, using cold water till you get the ideal temperature (hand warm, 77°F/25°C). Add the yeast solution and nutrient and stir thoroughly. Cover the fermentation vessel and leave in a warm place for 4 days. 3 After 4 days, dissolve the rest of the sugar in jugfuls of the must (the correct name for the fermenting grape juice solution), tip it back into the fermentation vessel and stir well in. Leave in a warm place for another week. Stir daily. 4 Siphon the must into gallon (5 litre) demijohns, add 2 crushed vitamin B tablets to each jar and top up with cold water if necessary. Plug the jars with cotton-wool bungs and leave in a warm place for a further 7-10 days. Disturb the must by shaking the jars with a circular motion every day if you can remember. 5 Move the jars to a cool place and leave completely undisturbed till the wine clears (about 2-3 weeks). 6 Siphon into bottles. The wine will continue to improve in flavour and texture for several weeks - if you can resist drinking it!