Hello, my name is Dave, and I like gluten. There, I said it.
Gluten supplies structure to sourdough, delivers a satisfying snap to Neapolitan pizza, and lends that alluring al dente bite to pasta. I have the luxury of enjoying products made from this plant protein, but according to the Mayo Clinic and the National Institutes of Health, about 0.7 percent of the population experiences a dangerous immune reaction to gluten. For sufferers of celiac disease, even trace amounts of the stuff can cause serious health problems.
Not long ago, a diagnosis of celiac disease meant navigating a minefield of potential triggers, from such clear culprits as bread and cake to less obvious cereal offenders such as soy sauce and even prescription medications. But now celiac sufferers have options as gluten-free and gluten-reduced products increasingly find shelf space alongside their conventional counterparts.
Gluten Basics
The English word “gluten” comes directly from the Latin gluten, meaning “glue,” and at one time referred to any kind of sticky substance. For this reason, short-grain sticky rice is misleadingly described as glutinous, even though rice is free of gluten. In modern parlance, gluten refers to a specific protein found in wheat, barley, spelt, rye, and other cereal grasses.
Biologically speaking, gluten is a sort of über compound, consisting of the two proteins gliadin and glutenin. The chemical details aren’t terribly important, except to know that gliadin and glutenin are the critical constituents of wheat that lend structure and elasticity to bread dough. Unfortunately for those with celiac disease, it’s precisely these proteins that cause gluten-associated ailments.
Gluten concentrations are commonly measured on a weight-by-weight basis in parts per million (ppm). Whole wheat bread is about 100,000 ppm, pasta is closer to 110,000 ppm, and pure gluten is 1 million ppm. Gluten levels in beer are sometimes expressed in milligrams per liter (mg/l), which is almost identical to ppm since beer is mostly water, and a liter of water weighs a kilogram. When it comes to beer, the casual observer can safely interchange ppm and mg/l with no practical consequence.
It’s commonly stated that a food with fewer than 20 ppm gluten may be called gluten-free, which is the threshold endorsed in the Codex Alimentarius, a joint effort between the World Health Organization and the United Nations.
Beer Made from Gluten-Free Ingredients
Individuals who need to stay away from any and all gluten will no doubt prefer to stick to making beer that is assuredly gluten-free, which brings us to what I like to call the transitive property of gluten: From gluten-free ingredients comes gluten-free beer. Mashing sorghum, rice, maize, proso millet, buckwheat, or other naturally gluten-free grains lets brewers create gluten-free wort. The Colorado Malting Company in Alamosa, Colorado, even sells malted sunflower seeds, which contribute complex proteins that promote head retention and foam stability. In addition to gluten-free grains and seeds, various brewing sugars also frequently find their way into the brew.
Just as with barley-based beer, the sugary wort is then boiled with hops, cooled, inoculated with yeast, fermented, conditioned, and packaged. The result is a beverage that has never contained any gluten whatsoever. New Planet Pale Ale, for example, lists its ingredients as water, sorghum and brown rice extracts, molasses, tapioca maltodextrin, caramel color, hops, and yeast.
Brands such as New Planet, Bard’s, and Redbridge, as well as products such as Dogfish Head Tweason’ale and Lakefront Brewing New Grist fall under this category. These all carry the FDA’s official gluten-free seal of approval.
Gluten-Reduced Processes
A more recent development in delivering celiac-friendly beer comes to us courtesy of Aspergillus niger, or black mold. If you’ve ever thrown out an onion that’s covered in dark splotches, then you’ve witnessed this ubiquitous fungus firsthand. A. niger creates an enzyme called protease that degrades proteins, including gluten. This enzyme is available commercially as White Labs WLN400 Clarity Ferm.
Originally developed to reduce chill haze, Clarity Ferm also dramatically reduces gluten levels, often to well below the 20 ppm threshold. It is in this class of gluten-reduced beers that we find Stone Brewing Company’s Delicious IPA. For Mitch Steele, Stone’s brewmaster, developing a gluten-reduced product isn’t just business; it’s personal.
“I was talking with Chris White from White Labs a couple of years ago because we were having some chill haze issues at Stone,” says Mitch. “Chris told me about this new enzyme that could reduce chill haze and also reduce gluten content at the same time. Shortly afterwards, my father-in-law was diagnosed with a gluten intolerance.”
Mitch’s father-in-law also happened to enjoy a good beer, so Mitch had the idea to try Clarity Ferm at Stone. Using the company’s flagship IPA, a trained sensory panel found no discernable taste difference between the IPA brewed with Clarity Ferm and without. But the sample made with the enzyme tested at fewer than 10 ppm of gluten.
The timing just happened to work out with a challenge that Stone CEO Greg Koch had presented to Stone’s brewers. “Greg had charged us with creating an IPA that would be called Delicious,” notes Steele. “After brewing a number of test batches that were good but didn’t quite live up to the name, I had Chris Ketchum try out a single hops brew with El Dorado. That’s when I knew we were on to something.”
Combining El Dorado with Lemondrop hops, Delicious IPA delivers on the promise its name makes. Initial impressions are of lemon candy with herbal overtones, but as the beer warms, grassy, even hay-like, notes begin to emerge. It’s an IPA drinker’s IPA, and samples consistently come back with less than 10 ppm gluten.
Perhaps most importantly, Mitch’s father-in-law can enjoy Delicious IPA with no adverse health effects.
Omission Beer, brewed by Portland’s Widmer Brothers, follows a similar enzymatic process to create very low gluten lagers, pale ales, and IPAs that taste like their full-gluten counterparts.
“We have been vigilant about brewery segregation and accurate testing,” notes Joe Casey, brewmaster and cofounder of Omission Beer. “The other challenge we have tackled is consumer education and working with various government regulators to provide as much information as possible … to remain consistently transparent about our brewing process. We were definitely prepared to have a strong focus on education … to make Omission successful, and the brand has lived up to that expectation.”
One reason that Clarity Ferm is so effective is that malting and mashing actually help degrade gluten proteins. Proteins in well-modified malts will have been degraded during the malting process, while less modified malts are often taken through a protein rest. These processes encourage the action of proteolytic enzymes, which serve the same function as the mold-derived proteases.
But even with Clarity Ferm, Casey recommends staying away from wheat and unmalted grains. “Wheat malt and raw wheat are not something that we are willing to include in Omission products,” he says. “It simply has too much gluten and is too much of a red flag for consumers. Our process has proven itself successful using 100 percent barley malt as our base grain because a huge reduction of gluten occurs during the malting process. Using highly undermodified malt, such as dextrin malts, could also be a problem.”
Homebrewing Gluten‑Reduced and Gluten‑Free Beer
Of the many reasons to homebrew, not having to deal with the FDA and TTB must certainly rank near the top. You’re free to do what you like, as long as you’re willing to accept the consequences of any risks you take. The first step, therefore, in creating your own gluten-reduced or gluten-free beer at home is this: Decide how critical gluten levels are to your health and lifestyle.
Gluten-Reduced Beer
If you choose to brew with traditional malts and want to reduce the amount of gluten in your beer, all you need to do is dose cooled wort with 10 ml (one vial) of White Labs Clarity Ferm when you pitch your yeast. The enzyme will digest gluten proteins while the yeast ferments the malt sugars. To get you started, here are four recipes for gluten-reduced beer:
- SMaSH Citra IPA
- Bohemian Pilsner
- Rot und Rauchig Smoked Red Lager
- “Kiss Me, I Brewed This!” Irish Red
“To get your product tested for gluten content will cost about $75–100 per test,” Casey notes. “If one is truly looking to have his/her homebrew be gluten-free, the only way to know is to submit samples to a lab for testing, and the best program would be to test each batch.”
It’s probably impractical for homebrewers to test every batch for gluten, but if you’re curious how Clarity Ferm affects a specific recipe, it might be worth sending off samples from different batches brewed using the same method. The aggregate results can offer clues as to the average gluten content of your recipe.
Gluten-Free Beer
If, however, you suffer from celiac disease and must exclude gluten at all costs, then your safest bet is to stick with gluten-free ingredients altogether. Sorghum extract has long been the favored fermentable for gluten-free brewers because of its ready availability. It weighs in at around 35 to 37 gravity points per pound per gallon (ppg), so each pound will yield 1.007 degree of specific gravity in a 5-gallon (19-liter) batch. Brown rice syrup is also popular, as are any number of Belgian candi sugars, honey, and dextrose.
Mashing your own gluten-free grains may be possible depending upon where you live and your level of dedication. At present, only a few homebrew suppliers stock gluten-free grain malts, the most popular of which are derived from sorghum, rice, buckwheat, and millet. Gluten-free oats are also available, but you need to take care that you’re getting oats that are designated as such. Chestnuts and sunflower seeds also find their way into some recipes.
Twila Henley of Grouse Malting & Roasting Company in Wellington, Colorado, a malting group devoted exclusively to gluten-free products, recommends a single infusion mash for well-modified gluten-free grains. A fairly high mash temperature of 163°F (73°C), along with an extended rest of up to two hours, will give alpha amylase enzymes sufficient time to break down the starches into fermentable sugars.
Here’s Twila’s recipe for Banjo Brown Ale, a flavorful and complex gluten-free beer brewed with millet, buckwheat, and oats as the grains.
You may need to add supplemental enzymes to ensure full saccharification. Alpha amylase is available in liquid form from many suppliers. Dosing your mash with this enzyme can help promote conversion of starches to sugars. And keep in mind that gluten-free malts such as sorghum often lack husks. Adding 0.1 pounds (45 grams) of rice hulls per gallon (3.8 liters) of final wort (e.g., 0.5 pounds/227 grams for a 5-gallon/19-liter batch) can help with lautering.
As for hops, they don’t contain gluten, barring any contamination along the way from bine to barrel.
Yeast
And then the yeast—according to Wyeast, Activator smack packs contain about 120 ppm gluten, which is many times greater than the 20 ppm threshold. However, pitching a single smack pack into 5 gallons (19 liters) of wort dilutes the net concentration in your beer to about 0.8 ppm, which may be acceptable. Two Wyeast strains are completely gluten-free:
- 1272 GF American Ale II
- 2206 GF Bavarian Lager
These are likely your best bet if you must avoid gluten completely.
At present, White Labs doesn’t market any yeast strains as gluten-free, but the company claims that its yeast slurry works out to only 12 ppm in the package.
Those who use dry yeast are in even more luck, as both Fermentis and Danstar propagate their dry strains on substrates that do not contain grain and are certified gluten-free.
Celiac disease is a serious condition whose management requires significant lifestyle changes. But gluten-free and gluten-reduced beers offer celiac and gluten-intolerant sufferers tasty new tipples that everyone can get behind. Even gluten gluttons like me.