Here's How Gluten-Free Beer Is Made Compared To The Standard

Whether you're a fan of a crisp IPA, a classic lager, or a dark stout, you might be surprised to find that all these beers start with the same ingredients: grains, hops, water, and yeast. The issue here for anyone avoiding gluten is that the grain in question is usually barley, and if not, it's wheat or rye. So, if these grains are key to the beer-making process, you're probably wondering how you can end up with a gluten-free drink. If you're in the U.S., the answer is to use grains that are naturally free of gluten, which might include buckwheat, rice, sorghum, millet, or corn. This problem is that by changing the grains, you're changing the flavor of the beer, so you'll often find that gluten-free beers use a combination of different grains to try and replicate that real beer taste.

These beers can be further divided into regular gluten-free and dedicated gluten-free. Dedicated gluten-free beers are produced in a facility that only processes gluten-free products. Regular gluten-free beers, while made without gluten-containing ingredients, bear the risk of cross-contamination from other products made at the same facility. Both regular and dedicated gluten-free beers must be tested for a maximum of 20 ppm (parts per million) to be labeled gluten-free. If you want to try some for yourself, Holidaily Fat Randy IPA and Glutenberg Blonde are both dedicated gluten-free options.

There is another method of making gluten-free beer, and that is to brew it as normal, with the regular ingredients, then add an enzyme that breaks down the gluten during the brewing process. This is a popular way of making gluten-free beer in the UK and Europe, as it doesn't affect the beer's flavor and requires fewer changes to the original recipe.

However, FDA regulations state that products made with barley, rye, or wheat cannot be sold as gluten-free, even if they contain less than 20 ppm. Beer made with barley, therefore, must be labelled as gluten-reduced and clearly state that it contains barley. As an example, Daura Damm is sold as gluten-free beer in its home country of Spain, but U.S. imports use different packaging that labels it as "crafted to remove gluten", despite it being the same product. If you've ever wondered why you don't have the same selection of gluten-free beers that other countries do, this could be the answer.