Ska Special ESB is Vegan Friendly

Company email (December 2011):

from Dave, co-founder and president of Ska. "I love that you guys have this database! Anyhow, I’m the co-founder and president of Ska Brewing and I thought I’d share our info with you as we’re now available in a few countries and we get quite a few calls about this (and I’m a long-time vegetarian trying to live a vegan lifestyle). All of our beers are only brewed at our brewery in Durango, Colorado and we use no animal products in filtering or clarifying, and although my partners aren’t vegan, they wouldn’t ever brew with a chicken. Cheers!" [Dave included a list matching what's below, listing Blonde, Blonde Dubbel and Milk Stout as non-vegan. -B]

Company Email:
"The only beers we make with any type of animal ingredient is our True Blonde and True Blonde Dubbel. We make both of those beers with Local Honey. I didn’t know that honey was off the list for Vegans. I’m kind of surprised, but wow, you learn stuff every day.

We cold filter our beer and the filter media we use is Perlite. Perlite is a bit greener than Diatomaceous Earth and it’s safer for the crew to work with. We make small pilot batches of beer that we will serve in our tasting room. Usually only about 10 gallons at a crack. Because these batches are so small, we do not filter them, we use finings. In those small batches for clarity we use a product called Biofine. It’s my understanding that it is a synthetic version of Isinglass."