gluten free beer

[tariq khan]

Hi,

Does anybody have any thoughts or advice about formulating a gluten free beer recipe ?

The research I've done seems to point towards Sorghum, Buckwheat, and Corn. Of course I've never used any of these ingredients or whether or not they are commercially available for brewers.
I'm assuming that our Yeast also will not be suitable as it has been grown in malted barley wort.

Any suggestions ?
I'm assuming that you brewers across the pond must be getting similar requests.

Cheers !

Tariq (York Brewery)

[RobertFromOz]

Tariq,
Making gluten free beer is not easy.

Your first problem, is getting a gluten free malt. Except for Africa (sorghum) I know of no currently available commercial gluten-free malt.
Gluten free malts will be produced in Australia and the USA this year, but do not expect them to be exported. Also do not think any major maltster would malt sorghum etc due to batch sizes and problems of contamination by barley. Malting sorghum is quite different to malting barley.

The liquid yeasts I know of are all grown using barley malt and hence cannot be used as is. DCL dried yeast is ok.

Gluten free grains have much higher gelatinisation temps than barley, hence some sort of a decoction mash must be used.

Gluten free beer has also been made using unmalted grains, need to use lots of enzymes. Bi-Aglut which makes a gluten free beer in Italy using this process, and have applied for patent s (do a search for "Gluten-free beer"), the details are provided.

Careful consideration must also be given to avoiding contamination from gluten as the standard test for gluten gives false negatives for barley malt.

Cheers from downunder.

[rgaret]

DECLAN GOODE @ U.C.C. ( UNIVERSITY COLLEGE CORK) IN EIRE HAS DONE EXTENSIVE RESEARCH IN THE MAKING OF GLUTEN FREE BEER, ON THE UNIVERSITYS PILOT BREWING FACILITY.
I BELIEVE SORGHUM WAS USED IN A DECOCTION LIKE MASH REGIME. RGARET

[tariq khan]

Thanks a lot for the info. I had a feeling this was not going to be easy !

Cheers !

Tariq