Gluten Free Beer - What's the difference?

For many of you with wheat allergies, trying to find a good refreshing gluten free beer that's palatable to the taste buds can be a challenge. Being "gluten free" myself, I wanted to find out what the differences between standard beer and gluten free beer were.

Obviously the main difference is that the beer is made from ingredients that do not contain glycoproteins (gluten) or has very low levels of gluten, as it turns out that technically it depends which country you are in. For example in the UK a beer with less than twenty parts per million of gluten (20ppm) is classed as "gluten free", whereas in Australia a beer has to have absolutely no detectable gluten to be classed as "gluten free".

To be a totally gluten free product many beers are brewed with ingredients like sorghum, a grain grown in the USA, Central America, Africa, Southern Asia and Southern Europe which doesn't contain gluten and is perfectly safe. It is said to produce a very nice tasting beer.

So in summary, the difference depends on which country you are drinking in and whether the beer has a low ppm of gluten or if it had been made without ingredients containing gluten.

I hope this article has been informative.

Love to hear what you think.