Vegetarians may wish to be careful with beer. Some vegetarians aren't ideological/religious about it, and some that are draw lines in different places.

It's worth noting that good results can be achieved with proper temperature control and irish moss, isinglass is not always needed. Also many/most keg beers are filtered rather than fined.

> Another survey from the USDA, also conducted by phone, put the [proportion] of vegetarians who’ve eaten meat in the last day at about two-thirds.

I where a vegetarian for 12 year, without having any real reason, other than I felt like it. Even at my most drunk I could always remember that I didn't eat meat.

Two-thirds... damn that's stupid. "I really want to be a vegetarian, because fluffy cows, but OMG cheese burger". Some people are weird.

A long history before modern manufacture of crappy commercial beers?

“I well remember for many years it was not expected, nor was it thought possible [for porter] to be made fine and bright, and four and five months was deemed to be sufficient age for it to be drunk at. The improvement of transparency has since been added to it by means of more and better workmanship, better malt, better hops and the use of isinglass.”

[1] http://tempestinatankard.com/2013/11/21/of-isinglass-and-oth...

But still when people are talking about the beginning of "modern manufacture of crappy commercial beers" I think it's safe to assume that they are at the very least talking about brewing after the discovery of the role of yeast in brewing and the control that that offered to the process, which is still 100 years after the quote I gave was made.

"Its stance means Marble is one of a handful of breweries to be approved by the Vegetarian Society, something that's earned it a loyal following."

'Handful' is completely meaningless in this context. How can a brewery fit into a hand? The actual list is also quite long and by no means exhaustive: http://www.vegsocapproved.com/ProductCategory/Details/126?pa...

Especially when you consider a lot of craft breweries are using vegetarian friendly techniques for clarifying their brews.

> 2: a small quantity or number <a handful of people>

How can a person fit into a hand?

Alternatively, when were you given the power to decide what words should mean in a language you claim not to be familiar with?

I'm making two points, it's a poor choice of word, as it is conceptually poor, even bordering on nonsense. It's also clearly the wrong word as evidenced by the long list I provided.

English, like almost any natural language, is rich in metaphor. If that's not your cup of tea, fine. But it's probably worth learning to roll with the punches, just the same. Is this really the hill you want to die on?

It's also a shame that you and the other poster are focussing on this rather than the fact that the statement is plainly wrong. There are clearly more than a 'few' veggie-friendly brewers.

So what you've cited in support of your argument in fact militates pretty strongly against it, because a hundred or so breweries isn't a very large subset of all those in the UK - according to CAMRA, that's a total of 1424, which puts the fraction on your list somewhere around seven percent. That's a little strong for my taste, but still a good beer. It is also, one might dare say, a relative handful.

This is a better list, which puts the number at closer to 50% if you use the filter 'England' and then toggle between Vegan and Everything: http://www.barnivore.com/beer?vfilter=All

I think people reading this article will come away with a view that only 5 or 6 breweries in the UK are producing vegan friendly beer, and that' clearly not the case. Lots of breweries are doing it. It's probably fairer to say 1 in 2 beers are vegan friendly