The Eco-Friendly Beer Brands To Know In The UK
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Looking to enjoy a greener pint? Here are the best sustainable and eco-friendly beer brands in the UK that are well worth having on your radar.
A bottle or pint of cool beer might be refreshing on a hot day, but did you know the process of making beer isn’t very sustainable?
For a start, many breweries use Isinglass, a product made from the gallbladders of fish to filter and stabilise their beer. This means many beers on the market shockingly aren’t vegetarian or vegan-friendly.
Then there’s the issue of water use. To industrially brew one single pint of beer typically requires a whopping 8 to 10 pints of water. Efficient it isn’t. And finally, there’s the issue of waste – spent grain accounts for 85% of the brewing industry’s waste.
As a nation of beer drinkers – in the UK alone we collectively guzzle 3.8 billion litres of beer a year – there’s huge potential for positive change. Thankfully there’s a new breed of responsible vegan brewers in town, pioneering new ways to make beer from waste food, with less water, and with organic ingredients. Meanwhile, other brands use their business as a force for good and donate to conservation or water charities.
The Best Eco-Friendly Beer Brands
To help you out, I’ve put together the best sustainable and eco-friendly beer brands in the UK to enjoy responsibly. If you’re in a hurry, use the quick links to jump to details about a specific brand, or keep scrolling for the full guide:
Crumbs
🌱 Vegan-Friendly /🍺 Made in the UK / 🛍️ Available from: Crumbs Brewing
Looking for beer that fights food waste? Look no further than Crumbs.
Passionate about brewing great-tasting beers and fighting food waste, Crumbs takes unsold artisan bread, and cleverly turns it into beer. This is all part of its mission to ‘Make Waste Wonderful’.
As 44% of UK-made bread never gets eaten, Crumbs Brewing has teamed up with its local bakery – Chalk Hills Bakery in Surrey – to help tackle this shocking statistic. Here Crumbs collects unsold loaves from the bakery and then turns them into beer.
Each of its beers reflects the style of the bread that goes into making it – from a zesty Sourdough Pale Ale to a warming Rye Ruby Ale.
Toast Ale
🌱 Vegan-Friendly /🍺 Made in the UK / 🛍️ Available from: Social Supermarket and Toast Brewing
Toast is another eco-friendly beer brand that is embracing the circular economy, and brewing its beer with surplus sandwich bread. What’s more, 100% of Toast’s distributable profits (or 1% of revenue, whichever is greater) go to charities fixing the food system to help magnify its impact.
So far, Toast has impressively saved so many slices of bread, that, if stacked up, that bread would tower over four times the height of Mount Everest!
This surplus fresh bread is used to replace 25% of the malted barley brewer’s would traditionally use. Here Toast utilises the heel end of loaves that would usually be discarded by the sandwich industry and whole surplus loaves to help make a dent in our food waste mountain.
Find a range of beers – from Helles-style Lager, hazy pale ales, and session IPAs, as well as low-ABV beer.
Small Beer
🌱 Vegan-Friendly /🍺 Made in the UK / 🛍️ Available from: Waitrose & Small Beer
As London’s first B-Corp certified brewery, South Bermondsey-based craft brewers Small Beer is known for its ethical production and responsible brewing practices.
As well as producing great-tasting vegan low-alcohol beers, Small Beer has cleverly designed a brewing system that requires just 1 ½ pints of water to brew one pint of beer. So much so, that since its first commercial brew in 2017, Small Beer says it has saved 6.5 million litres of water.
As well as saving water, all other aspects of sustainability have been considered. Spent grain is delivered to a partner farm, for use as feed for cows. Even the grain sacks, which Small Beer’s malt supplier can’t refill, are donated to BOST. This social and environmental charity uses the sacks to store and move gardening materials across its neighbourhood programmes.
All the beer labels, boxes, and business cards are made from 100% recycled materials, and even the efficiency of its packaging has been carefully considered to keep carbon emissions as low as possible.
But the key question is how does Small Beer taste? I always imagined low-alcohol beer to taste quite watery. However, this is not the case here – each beer is ram-packed full of flavour.
My partner and I have tried out a few different beers. We were blown away by the Dark Lager, which was hands down our favourite, with its hints of chocolate and coffee. The refreshing citrus flavours of the Session Pale came a close second.
Little Valley
🌱 Vegan-Friendly /🍺 Made in the UK / 🛍️ Available from: Little Valley Brewery
If you’re looking for organic and fair trade vegan beer then try Little Valley.
Since the brewery was founded in 2005, Little Valley has been committed to making great-tasting beer that’s vegan-friendly, certified organic, and fair trade.
Find a whole host of ethically sourced beers – from IPAs and ales to wheat and cherry beers, to sip sustainably on.
Brewgooder
🌱 Vegan-Friendly /🍺 Made in the UK / 🛍️ Available from: Social Supermarket and Sainsbury’s
One of my partner’s breweries of choice, Scottish brewery Brewgooder has a philosophy of “drink beer, give water.”
100% of the profits from Brewgooder’s range of tasty beers go into clean water projects where communities don’t have access to safe drinking water. So far funds raised by Brewgooder have gone towards installing boreholes and solar-powered water tanks, as well as improving sanitation systems.
Projects that have benefited from these clean water supplies include mother and baby clinics, and school vegetable gardens. This work is helping to change lives for the better.
Find a wide range of craft beers – from classic lager to IPAs such as New England, Session and Hazy. My partner buys the mixed pack of four, and rates all four highly!
Fauna Brewing
🌱 Vegan-Friendly /🍺 Made in the UK / 🛍️ Available from: Social Supermarket and Fauna Brewing
Beer and conservation may sound like an unlikely pairing, but Fauna Brewing blends the two beautifully. Passionate about both beer and conservation, Fauna Brewing supports different wildlife charities for each beer it brews.
Its Cheetah Lager supports the Cheetah Conservation Fund. Here, profits from the sales of this sustainable beer help fund projects like the Livestock Guarding Dog programme. This pioneering programme homes dogs with farmers to scare away wild predators, reducing cheetah and human conflict by 90%.
Meanwhile, Fauna Brewing’s Pango Table Beer raises money for the African Pangolin Working Group. This is a group who are dedicated to rehabilitating pangolins in the wild. And its Wild Dog IPA supports the Painted Dog Conservation Fund. This helps fund vital painted dog anti-poaching work and the removal of snares.
Looking for more sustainable beverage recommendations? I’ve got you covered:
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