In episode 14 you will find the best gluten-free beer brands, low gluten beers, if they are safe to consume, and easy GF beer alternatives. Join Melissa, as she provides easy answers for those with celiac disease or gluten sensitivities!
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Resources Mentioned
Gluten-Free Beers List and Guide
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Transcript
Hey everyone. I’m Melissa Erdelac, host of the Gluten-Free Recipe Challenge podcast and creator behind the gluten-free website, Mamagourmand. Here we take beloved recipes you thought you’d never enjoy again and transform them into easy copycat versions just as good as the originals.
Today I’m really gonna play into some stereotypes and talk about beer. Why? Because Father’s Day is this weekend, and that’s conjuring up all kinds of images , like a dad standing in front of a grill with a kiss the cook apron, and holding a beer and a spatula.
So let’s run with that. We’ll discuss gluten-free beer options, alternatives. Address some rumors that you may have heard, like Bud Light and Corona are gluten-free. But asterisk on that, keep listening, and where you can get your hands on some of these beverages.
So first, is beer gluten free? No. 99.9% of the brands come from unsafe grains and they’re brewed from wheat, rye, malt, or barley.
To be completely safe from not reacting to a beer, you have to have a certified gluten-free beer and unfortunately, there’s not many of ’em and they’re kind of hard to come by. But I will tell you where you can find them or your greatest chance of finding them. And these gluten-free beers are made from gluten-free grains like rice or sorghum or gluten-free oats. And they’re processed on completely dedicated gluten-free equipment. Because they’re made from different grains, that’s why they taste different because they are. They’re not like any of the beers you drank once you turn the completely appropriate age to drink a beer.
There’s also beers that are labeled gluten reduced or gluten removed, or some of ’em say crafted to remove gluten, which I feel like is a little bit of a marketing trick because these beers are actually made with the same grains.
They’re made with unsafe grains, but then the gluten is removed through a process called hydrolysis. They just use an enzyme to remove the gluten. They taste like your average beer because they’re made with the grains that you recognized, but when they’re tested the gluten is removed. There’s less than 20 parts per million of gluten in it.
So game on. We can have these beers? Well, not exactly.
There’s a lot of fine print on that because since they’re not certified gluten free, there’s actually no sort of set regulations that these beers have been tested, or they’re completely safe for consumption if you’re celiac or highly sensitive.
These manufacturers are tapping into a market of, there’s a lot more gluten-free people out there so they can use their same equipment that they make their regular beer on. They don’t have to buy more expensive gluten-free ingredients.
They could use this process, which is pretty cheap and easy to do, and say their beer is gluten reduced or crafted to remove gluten or gluten has been removed, which can kind of be a little bit confusing if you didn’t know.
So are these red flags? Should you completely stay away from.
Well, it kind of depends. If you are just cutting back on gluten or you have a gluten sensitivity, some people can still drink these beers and not react to it. But if you are highly sensitive, if you have celiac, if you’re one of those people that need to have gluten-free lip balm, gluten-free shampoo, and you are that sensitive to it, I would stay the hell away from these beers because they’re still made with gluten-free grains.
If you’re not very sensitive or you’re not a very good patient and you don’t care, these are the beers that would be categorized as low gluten or gluten removed. Corona, Pacifico, Heineken, Bud Light, Budweiser, Coors Light, Mic Ultra Amber Max. These are all tested and said to have less than 20 parts per million of gluten. But like I said, they are still made with gluten-free grains.
There are some craft brewers that also use this process and would have more of , not your average pilsner or lager.
And that would be Duck Foot brewing has it, Stone Brewing, Omission has a lot of gluten reduced beers. Odd 13 brewing. Two Brothers Brewing Company, they all have gluten reduced beers as well.
But if you need a legit rubber stamp, gluten-free beer, how do you get your hands on one? So one way is you could just go to your local liquor store, and I don’t mean your grocery store. Your liquor store, they usually carry at least one, Red Bridge lager, it’s made by Anhuesuer Bush is the most popular one. They will probably have that, but some of ’em, they cycle through some more of these craft brewer ones. And every time I look, there’s usually one or two to choose from, and I live in a pretty moderate- sized town.
Whole Foods also carries them. And Whole Foods will probably have more of a selection if you have one of those by you.
And you could also look on Amazon. So if you have food delivery through Amazon, you could search specifically some of the gluten-free beers, and it could be delivered to you.
There’s also online companies like Total Wine or Drizzly that can deliver right to your house, but your state has to be able to allow that delivery, so you need to just check and make sure that your state’s cool like that.
For all these certified gluten-free beers, if you go to my gluten-free beer post, I list them all out and I list them by varieties as well. So you can choose from pilsners or lagers or stouts. They have porters, there’s IPAs. There’s a lot of options. And I list out the specific brand. So you could find the beer that you’re interested in trying and do a search to see where you can get it locally.
There are alternatives to beer as well. I usually just grab another option like canned seltzers, which are everywhere and anywhere. Hard cider. There’s canned mixed drinks, and these are all clearly labeled gluten free, so you know they’re safe and plus, they’re marketed in a way that try to make you believe you’ll actually lose weight drinking them, which are complete lies.
So that’s all for this episode of the Gluten-Free Recipe Challenge. If you click on the link provided in whatever podcast app you’re listening on, you’ll find my gluten-free beer resource that lists all the specific GF beers and has a lot more titillating information. If you do have a question I didn’t address on the post, go ahead and leave me a comment there and I will do some more sleuthing for you.
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