Today’s NY Times had an article about a change in the ingredients of Guinness stout:

Guinness, the Irish stout that once famously advertised itself under the slogan â€œGuinness is good for you,â€ took a step this week to inject 21st-century food culture into its 256-year-old product. Guinness is going vegan.The company announced on Monday that starting at the end of 2016, its beer will no longer contain trace amounts of fish bladder, an integral part of its filtration process.

See this video for a description of how isinglass that is derived from fish bladder helps the clarification process.

The use of fish bladder for the filtration of beverages is well known from halakhic literature. Rabbi Yehezkel Landau answered a question (Noda Biyehudah Kama, YD 26) about the use of fish bladder for the filtration of wine. Below is a translation of some of the Noda Biyehudah’s responsum from this responsum about drinking wine that was not produced under rabbinic supervision by Rabbi Elliot Dorff. The original Hebrew can be found here.

(The question revolves around) Krok, which some call Heusen Bleusen, which is the bladder of the fish called Heusen, which is an unkosher (×˜×ž×) fish. People dry the bladder of that fish and insert it into the drink which is called med in Poland, or honey juice. Its nature is to precipitate the lees and to clarify the drink. In Germany they are already used to acting like this, i.e., to put it into barrels of wine for this reason, and it is now about twenty years that they began doing this also in Poland in the drink of honey juice called med. And the great scholars of the generation were aroused by this to forbid it on the grounds that it remains in the drink, and “that which is preserved is treated legally as if it were cooked” (i.e., it is as if the juice and the unkosher fish were cooked together). And if one argues that it (the unkosher fish) is nullified by being less than one part in sixty, we do not nullify a forbidden substance ab initio. And there are those who want to permit the practice on the grounds that it is dried out, and it is therefore like wood which has no taste whatsoever, and they see it as being analogous to the inner lining of a stomach. And there are those who want to permit the practice on the grounds that we only restrict prior nullification when it is one’s intention to nullify, but here the intention is only to clarify the wine and not to give it a taste. My honored cousin, the rabbi, the great luminary, Rabbi Joseph, the head of the court and the academy of the city of [Neustadt]*Â in the region Cracow, ruled to forbid the practice. But since the custom has already spread to permit the practice in the regions of Germany and Poland, I have decided to write according to my humble opinion.

At the end of his long responsum, Rabbi Landau concludes that

For all the reasons mentioned above, it seems that it is permitted to put Heusen Bleusen into the wine or the drink which they call med in Poland because the intention is not to nullify but only to clarify the drink and to precipitate the lees. And “it is good for Israel, for if they are not prophets, they are children of prophets.” (Pesaá¸¥im 66a) According to my humble opinion it is completely permissible (×”×™×ª×¨ ×’×ž×•×¨ ×”×•×). And what seemed right to me I have written.

×ž×›×œÂ ×”×˜×¢×ž×™× ×”× ×´×œ × ×¨××” ×©×ž×•×ª×¨ ×œ×ª×ª ×”×•×™×–×Ÿ ×‘×œ××–×™×´×Ÿ ×œ×ª×•×š ×”×™×™×Ÿ ××• ×”×ž×©×§×” ×©×§×•×¨×™×Ÿ ×‘×¤×•×œ×™×Ÿ ×ž×¢×´×“ ×›×™×•×Ÿ ×©××™×Ÿ ×”×›×•×•× ×” ×œ×‘×˜×œ×• ×¨×§ ×œ×”×¦×œ×™×œ ×”×ž×©×§×” ×•×œ×”×•×¨×™×“ ×”×©×ž×¨×™×. ×•×”× ×” ×œ×™×©×¨××œ ×× ××™×Ÿ × ×‘×™××™× ×”× ×‘× ×™ × ×‘×™××™× ×”× ×•×”×™×ª×¨ ×’×ž×•×¨ ×”×•× ×œ×¢× ×™×•×ª ×“×¢×ª×™. ×•×ž×” ×©× ×¨××” ×œ×™ ×›×ª×‘×ª×™:

So if you have been drinking Guinness for a while, you have no need to worry that it wasn’t permissible to drink.

*Translation has been corrected. See Avrohom’s comment below.

Posted on November 4th, 2015 under Jewish Law, Kashrut • RSS 2.0 feed • Both comments and pings are currently closed