{"id":273985,"date":"2025-11-20T17:44:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-20T17:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/273985\/"},"modified":"2025-11-20T17:44:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T17:44:09","slug":"is-beer-kosher-not-automatically-any-longer-rabbis-say-the-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/273985\/","title":{"rendered":"Is beer kosher? Not automatically any longer, rabbis say \u2013 The Forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

Photo by Bauhaus1000\/iStock<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\"Louis<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tBy Louis Keene<\/a>
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tNovember 20, 2025\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a simple reason Halle Goldblatt likes to tour breweries on vacation: People who keep kosher can sample the product. Unlike wine, which requires certification to be deemed kosher, beer has historically received the benefit of the doubt.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost people, when they travel, go to wineries,\u201d Goldblatt, a self-described beer aficionado, said in a phone interview. \u201cI can\u2019t do that, but I can always go to a brewery and have a beer.\u201d<\/p>\n

But multiple kosher certifiers now say the assumption that beer is kosher has gone flat.<\/p>\n

The heads of OU Kosher, Star-K and OK Kosher \u2014 three of the five major certification agencies \u2014 announced this month that all beer will soon require certification to be considered kosher, attributing the change to the increased use of flavoring and other additives in craft beers.<\/p>\n

A list of problematic ingredients rabbinic inspectors recently discovered in breweries included oyster broth, clam juice, wine and milk, according to OK Kosher.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese ingredients are regularly included in craft beers,\u201d OK Kosher wrote in its letter. \u201cAs such, the major kashrus agencies have concluded that the time has come to change our old policy of accepting beer as free of kashrus concerns.\u201d<\/p>\n

The agencies provided a list of more than 900 beers that are currently hechshered, or certified kosher, which is typically denoted with an agency\u2019s symbol on the packaging. (\u24ca is OU Kosher\u2019s mark.) The rest \u2014 which includes popular imports like Dos Equis and regional favorites like Sierra Nevada \u2014 will no longer be acceptable to serve at OU-certified establishments as of Jan. 1, 2026, OU Kosher said.<\/p>\n

The decision undercut a credo that was long a saving grace for kosher travelers, casual drinkers and hopheads. One Facebook thread responding to the news received more than 100 comments<\/a>, with a few seeing the change as a way for the certifiers to drum up business. But the majority of the commenters \u2014 Goldblatt among them \u2014 appeared to begrudgingly understand the decision. And a few wondered why it had not come sooner.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first, I was like, \u2018Oh, no, this is gonna make my life a lot harder,\u2019\u201d Goldblatt said. \u201cBut I think it makes sense for the OU. People rely on them to get honest information about the things that they are consuming,\u201d she added, \u201cso I think it\u2019s good for the kosher consumer.\u201d<\/p>\n

New brews, you lose<\/p>\n

The acceptability of beer even without rabbinic oversight was rooted in an assumption that it only contained four basic ingredients: grain, water, hops and yeast. Those ingredients are each considered inherently kosher, so using them in combination did not pose any challenges.<\/p>\n

National regulations helped preserve the four-ingredient standard. Germany\u2019s Reinheitsgebot, a beer purity law dating back several centuries, ensured that breweries there did not use artificial additives, and in the United States, a law mandates that any added flavoring must be noted on the packaging.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe good, old-fashioned beer everybody would drink was simple,\u201d Rabbi Moshe Elefant, OU Kosher\u2019s chief operating officer, said in a video interview. Now, he said, manufacturers \u201cwant to enhance the beer \u2014 to give them an edge. So they can add all sorts of flavors.\u201d<\/p>\n

A major catalyst for the flavor trend is the rise of craft breweries, small and independent manufacturers. They\u2019ve flooded the market with sours, stouts, barrel-aged beers and bocks, and now account for up to a quarter of U.S. beer sales<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The use of additives to make exotic flavors put even the \u201cplain\u201d beer into question, Elefant explained, because breweries often use the same vats for different recipes. And while those breweries surely clean their equipment between uses, cleaning is not the same as kashering. Some cleaning processes are primarily chemical while rendering something kosher requires heat.<\/p>\n

Elefant, who is also OU Kosher\u2019s executive rabbinic coordinator, said the organization\u2019s formal policy change was nearly two years in the making, but even before then, \u201cwe\u2019ve been grappling with this issue for a while.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elefant listed two other beverages that fall into a gray area, but do not currently require certification: Whiskey, which like beer uses basic ingredients, is sometimes aged in barrels that previously held wine; and orange juice, which sometimes shares equipment with grape juice.<\/p>\n

Orange juice was spared a certification mandate, Elefant said, because the processes used to clean the equipment between uses were considered sufficient. And while he personally believes whiskey merits a similar reversal to beer, he admitted it was not currently the position of his employer.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe walk a delicate tightrope,\u201d he said. \u201cOn one hand, we want people who keep kosher to be able to have as much kosher food as possible, we\u2019re not looking to be onerous. But on the other hand, we are responsible that when we tell somebody that they could eat something, that we really are convinced that it\u2019s kosher without question.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he dismissed comments that the beer policy was financially motivated, saying that certification can cost as little as a few thousand dollars a year. (The price depends on travel costs for supervisors, number of facilities and other variables.)<\/p>\n

The law of the spirit, or the spirit of the law?<\/p>\n

Another responsibility for Orthodox decisionmakers, whether a synagogue rabbi or an umbrella organization like the OU, is to make rules that people can follow.<\/p>\n

Quoting the Talmud, Elefant said, \u201cJust like there\u2019s a mitzvah to say something that people will listen to, there\u2019s a mitzvah not to say it if people aren\u2019t going to listen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Working in tandem with other certifying agencies was crucial, then, to bolster the authority of what could be a controversial decree. Elefant joked that when they first met to discuss it, each agency said they had wanted to do it but were waiting for the others to make the first move.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, it remains to be seen how well the rule will stick. Confusion has persisted, with some saying the agencies\u2019 list of kosher beers is inconvenient and leaves out brands that have longstanding regional hechshers, like Shiner Bock.<\/p>\n

Goldblatt, the aficionado, has been to dozens of breweries and tasted some 200 different beers, according to her profile on the drink-rating app Untappd. But she had been drinking with vigilance long before the OU\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n

When she visits a new brewery, she tends to pepper her tour guide with questions about the brewing process. What ingredients do they use? Do they use only those ingredients? Do they use the same equipment for everything?<\/p>\n

Absent rabbinic oversight, she developed her own code: If it contained artificial flavoring, she would steer clear of it and \u2014 per the old rules \u2014 choose an unflavored option. Natural flavoring would be okay, if she could learn enough about it. On a recent trip to Wisconsin, she picked out a fruity craft beer, having determined the brewery used whole fruit and not grapes.<\/p>\n

Though she recognized the value of the OU\u2019s policy \u2014 saying it would eventually bring needed clarity to a cloudy landscape \u2014 she thought she might stick to her own, at least for now.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess if I looked and the brewery made something like oyster stouts, I may abstain from that brewery altogether,\u201d she said. \u201cBut if it\u2019s a brewery that just does regular beer and it\u2019s an unflavored beer, then I would probably still drink that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Louis Keene is a reporter for the Forward. His work has also been published in The New York Times, New York magazine and Vice. He is based in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Photo by Bauhaus1000\/iStock By Louis Keene November 20, 2025 There\u2019s a simple reason Halle Goldblatt likes to tour…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273986,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[102,6636,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-273985","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-nutrition","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}