Gluten is a mixture of gliadin
and glutenin proteins that are found in wheat, barley and rye, and
from the research that I have done, oats are excluded since oats only
carry one of these proteins.
Beer is an alcoholic beverage
made from malted cereal grain (wheat, barley, rye), flavored with
hops and fermented. Now while there are root beers (sarsaparilla, and
birch), the word Beer is a newer classification most commonly used to
group together Ales and Lagers into one category.
So with these definitions working as a
baseline for what we are talking about, I think it is pretty easy to
see that there is no such thing as Gluten Free Beer, by definition.
So until recently the question really was, “do you have a recipe
for a gluten free alcoholic beverage that is fermented without the
sugars from fruit or honey that has a similar body and flavor to ales
or lagers?” Well, that is a mouthful, but we know what you mean,
and yes we do. Here is our “house recipe”.
Rice Syrup Solids
2.0lb @ 15min
Light Candi Sugar
1.0lb @ 15min
Malto-Dextrin
8.0oz @ 15min
Cascade Hops 1oz @
60min
Cascade Hops .5oz
@ 30min
Cascade Hops .25oz
@ 15min
Cascade Hops .25oz
@ 0min
Nottingham Ale
Yeast
...But, like many other commercial
gluten free products, this is absolutely Gluten Free, but is not what
most would think of as Beer. Sorghum is a great base for alcoholic
beverages, but it has a fundamentally different taste than barley or
wheat, so we add other sugars to mask that flavor a bit and the
Malto-Dextrin to simulate the body of an ale. And, until recently
this is how Gluten Free beers were built; trying to mix different
kinds/amounts of other gluten free sugars to simulate traditional
beer. But, for brewers, this landscape has change dramatically over
the last couple years.
Clarity-Ferm was originally designed
for brewers to fight chill haze, which is a “precipitation of
complexed polyphenols and protiens”, that appear while storing your
beer cold, but will disappear when the temperature increases. This is
just a visual defect of beer, but many people like the look of a nice
clear beer, so Clarity-Ferm was designed to fight this unsightly
cloudiness. Clarity-Ferm is an enzyme that essentially breaks down
proteins, and it just so happens that these same proteins include
gliadin and glutenin. The gluten levels of a beer can be lowered to
under 20 ppm, which is under the international standards for “Gluten
Free”. This means that you can add Clarity-Ferm to ANY homebrew at
the start of fermentation (as long as there is no rye) for a drink
that is absolutely Beer, but not exactly totally Free of Gluten.
What does this mean for the consumer?
What is the best option for a Gluten Free Beer? Well, if you are
fundamentally opposed to gluten for dietary reasons that have to do
with loose interpretations of what a small portion of ancient
homosapiens consumed for survival, then you may have a small inner
battle on your hands on what “gluten free” means. However, if you
are gluten intolerant, or have Coeliac Disease you are most likely
free to drink either the barley based beer or the non-barley based
beer without any complications. But with that said, if you are highly
allergic to any amount of gluten or maybe even one of the two
proteins that make up gluten, which some people are, I would
hesitantly try the Clarity-Ferm beer with an EpiPen on hand for any
allergic reactions that may occur... along with a ambulance at
standby, and a doctor close by, and your Will filled out, and well,
you get the point. Try a small sample and be very careful.
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