Is Guinness vegan?
Last checked 26 August 2026
Vegan.
Yes. Guinness stopped using isinglass — a fining agent made from fish — in 2018, and has been vegan since. That includes Draught, Original, Foreign Extra and the canned and bottled versions.
What changed
For most of its history Guinness was clarified with isinglass, made from fish swim bladders. It is the traditional way to clear stout, and it meant Guinness was not vegan despite containing nothing animal-derived in the recipe itself.
In 2015 the brewery announced it was installing a new filtration system at St James’s Gate. By the end of 2017 the kegs had changed over, and by 2018 the bottles and cans had followed. The finings are gone.
What that covers
Guinness Draught, Guinness Original / Extra Stout, Foreign Extra Stout, Guinness Zero and the widget cans are all vegan. Diageo has confirmed this publicly and repeatedly.
The one thing to watch
Guinness-branded food is a separate question. Guinness pies, Guinness cheese and Guinness bread are made by other companies under licence, and are usually not vegan for reasons that have nothing to do with the beer.
The same goes for a pint of something else in the same pub. Guinness changing its process says nothing about the cask ale on the next tap, which may well still be fined with isinglass.
The wider point
This is a good example of why “is X vegan?” answers go stale. Guinness was not vegan, then it was, and a lot of advice online still has not caught up. Processes change, recipes change, and a confident answer from 2016 can be confidently wrong today.
That is also why checking the actual label in front of you beats remembering what you read.