gluten free beer

[owbeeon]

hi all,
A friend has just asked me if i can brew gluten free home brew, as she has an alergy,
i know gluten is found in wheat, but is it in the run of the mill kits??? anyone have any advice ?

[stevezx7r]

I'm quite sure that any kit you buy (unless otherwise stated) will have gluten. I've only seen one recipe for a gluten free beer and that was an All Grain recipe. I'll dig it out if your interested otherwise it's a trip to the supermarket to look for gluten free beer I'm afraid.

[cwrw gwent]

I have a friend who is intolerant of gluten but really misses his ale so I found this website for him;

http://www.boskbeer.com/page5.htm

I've offered to brew it for him if he buys the kit. At £29 plus P&P it's a little more pricey than the bog standard but it still works out at only £1 a pint. I've no idea what it tastes like or even if it's any good. It would be interesting to find out.

[araldite]

I have a friend who is intolerant of gluten but really misses his ale so I found this website for him;

http://www.boskbeer.com/page5.htm

I've offered to brew it for him if he buys the kit. At £29 plus P&P it's a little more pricey than the bog standard but it still works out at only £1 a pint. I've no idea what it tastes like or even if it's any good. It would be interesting to find out.

hi gwent my partners a coeliac so i have done the bosk beer kit and got some pretty good results, its not a just a add water kit you need to boil up with hops but everything apart from the pan and strainer is supplied the quality is certainly better than any commercial bottle we have tried.

[cwrw gwent]

Hi Araldite,

Welcome to the forum and thanks for the info. Has anyone else tried Bosk?

[duncan incapable]

I tried Bosk a while ago. There is a whole thread about it. Just put bosk in the search box on the forum.

I didn't rate it that highly and so developed my own gluten free recipes. The best is 'four star'. Its in the recipes section. Again just search for it.

I tested my gluten free brews on hardened real ale drinkers. Bosk got a thumbs down as it doesn't really taste like beer. 'Four Star' fooled them all, they didn't spot is was gluten free.

There are a couple of gluten free beers for sale. Hambletons GFA and GFL are not to my taste. 'Against the Grain' from the fine ale club is OK.

[duncan incapable]

hi all,
i know gluten is found in wheat, but is it in the run of the mill kits??? anyone have any advice ?

Gluten has a strict biological meaning and a colloquial one. When people are coeliac they use 'gluten' in the colloquial sense which means any one of a number of proteins which are found in wheat, barley, oats, rye, spelt and other ancient relatives of wheat. (In its strict sense gluten is only found in wheat and its ancestors).
So any kit which contains malted barley or wheat contains some gluten and should be avoided by coeliacs.

In the USA and South Africa its possible to get hold of malted sorghum which is gluten free. It has a distinctive taste which, although not unpleasant, makes the beer taste unlike barley malt based beer. This is what is used in the Bosk kit. Its also used in Nigerian Guinness and at one time I believe no wheat or barley were used at all. However all the Nigerian Guinness I have seen recently contains wheat and barley, it actually says so on the label.

Other gluten free beer ingredients include rice, corn, molasses, treacle and sugar. There are one or two commercial beers which are made from a high proportion of these and they have very low gluten contents - apparently safe for coeliacs.

My own recipes contain a small proportion of fruit syrups and juices as well as treacle and sugar. Its very important to me that they taste like real ale so I keep the proportions of any one ingredient low so it doesn't dominate. Over the course of several years I have tried adding a lot of different flavourings to my brews with the aim of making them taste more like real ales. Some of these ingredients seem a bit weird, but it works. Its also cheap - less than 50p a pint.

[Jim]

My wife is coeliac as well. Before she was diagnosed she used to drink my beer (grrr! ) but obviously can't now. I did offer to try one of those kits for her, but when she saw the price she changed her mind - she's not a mad beer fan anyway, so she just sticks to wine mostly.

[araldite]

Might give that four star a shot duncan just been on bosks site and noticed p&p is now £16

[duncan incapable]

Might give that four star a shot duncan just been on bosks site and noticed p&p is now £16

Crumbs, it'd be cheaper to go and get it myself. Perhaps they are packing it more securely than before. In the first one delivered to me the bottle of syrup had burst.

I've been making 'four star' regularly for a couple of years now so I have a couple of additional tips.

I can no longer find chocolate essence locally. It tastes fine without it or you can buy it online from http://www.naturallygoodfood.co.uk.

Its best to use two sachets of gelatine (or three teaspoons if you have loose) for fining as just the one is sometimes not quite enough.

Its better to bottle slightly too early than slightly too late. Late bottled brews have a strange aroma. The taste is OK, but the peg on my nose hurts
I use recycled PET bottles which don't explode if a little over-primed.

More hop extract (1tsp) is nice if you like a traditional bitter, more treacle (up to 450g total) is nice if you like a sweeter stout type ale.

[yorkie]

Araldite,

I've tried duncans recipes (Four Star, Sump Oil and Liquorice Stout), and have been really impressed. Can highly recommend these (go for the Four Star first, and you'll want to try the others).

I have also given bottles to both coeliacs and non coeliacs, and all have been impressed with people not believing it isn't normal beer, and even asking to buy some....

I've tried varying Duncans recipes, and some have worked, others not, but go by what the recipe says and you can't go wrong... I've managed to fund chocolate in a cake decorating shop, but the brew is just as good with double the quantity of vanilla. I've also halved the quantity of maltodextrin and I'm still happy with the results.

Cost wise, I work it out to be around 35 pence a pint, which compares well with Hambletons GFA which I quite like (around £2.70 ish, although i've picked it up from the brewery before - just off the A1 near Ripon for £1.60 ish, although the price was going up). I must say though, given the choice, I'd go for the Four Star....

Best of luck

Chris

[araldite]

yorkie
just bottled some red diesel it certainly is different, swmbo usually as a top of lemonade anyway so should be ok but i want to try it out of curiosity,if i get a result will try the four star next.
cheers arald

[yorkie]

Arald,
You'll certainly notice the difference with the four star. Very moreish, in fact have spent afternoons at work waiting to have a pint when I get home (surely not normal...).
Using the billingtons as Duncan says certainly makes a difference to the clearing of the beer (I know, to some this isn't beer, but who cares, it tastes just like beer...).
I'd give it a bash anyway, you and swmbo will be pleasantly surprised. I'm also impressed that the head stays on the pint all the way down the glass.

All this talk of beer, I'm off to crack open a nice cold bottle. Lets see, Four star, Red Diesel, a couple of other variants (only slight changes, but not on par with Four star) or Liquorice Stout. Hmm to have a choice...
Cheers
Yorkie

[araldite]

yorkie
tried the diesel (curiosity got the better of me) only been in the bottle a week, its not bad at all swmbo had the usual lemonade top and enjoyed it she thought it had a ginger beer quality to it with the lemonade, will certainly try the four star next
cheers arald