What makes beer gluten-free?
It seems gluten-free beers have suddenly caught on; not a week goes by without another brewery announcing they're producing gluten-free versions of their standard beers. As Coeliacs, setting up the Bellfield Brewery was something we did not because it was fashionable but because we want to specialise in gluten-free beer. We aim to produce beer that tastes great and that happens to be gluten free.
There are three main ways to produce gluten free beer. Sue Cane, the respected gluten free beer writer who tweets @gfbeerexpert explained this all in her recent article for print magazine Gluten Free Heaven.
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In a nutshell you can brew using alternative grains or extracts such as buckwheat, sorghum, millet, rice, or quinoa. Or you can brew a standard beer and de-glutenise it, using Brewers Clarex, an enzyme that breaks down the gluten protein. This is how the vast majority of UK brewers are producing their gluten-free beers. Alternatively you can use other methods, such as filtering, or a combination these approaches.
We have optimized our brewing process to reduce gluten at every stage so that we can produce beers that are certified gluten-free and testing below 10ppm without the need to add anything. Just naturally, great tasting gluten-free beer because that's all we do.
View our most recent lab test results.
