Vegetarianism and beer a yeasty flavour. Finings are used to clear the beer of yeast – there are a variety of agents used as finings, including silicon dioxide, gelatin, polyclar, and isinglass. Isinglass is the most common fining used to clear cask ale. Isinglass is produced from the swim bladders of fish, usually sturgeon, though also those in the polynemidae, sciaenidae and siluridae families; as it is an animal product, cask ale cleared with isinglass is not considered vegetarian. A brewer may also use some form of animal product in the later stages of beer processing, such as glycerol monostearate, which is used
Elasmobranchii grooved to constitute a clasper for the transmission of sperm. These fish are widely distributed in tropical and temperate waters. Many fish maintain buoyancy with swim bladders. However elasmobranchs lack swim bladders, and maintain buoyancy instead with large livers that are full of oil. This stored oil may also function as a nutrient when food is scarce. Deep sea sharks are usually targeted for their oil, because the livers of these species can weigh up to 20% of their total weight. Fossilised shark teeth are known from the early Devonian, around 400 million years ago. During the following Carboniferous period,