Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

Wife has celiac and likes beer... unfortunately we are limited to the three beers on the shelf (Redbridge, New grist and Bards)... anyone here have experience with gluten free brewing and the results you may have had? I have a recipe for a Blood Orange Hefe that I am going to give a whirl but was curious to know who else out there might have some experience with GF brewing. The recipe I am referring to is http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f75/gluten- ... fe-181144/ Unfortunately Blood Oranges are out of season so I will have to try another type of orange instead.

I'm not an expert, nor do I play one on TV, but I'd look at some of the articles on Brewer's Clarex (also called Clarity Ferm). It may drop the gluten proteins dow to an acceptable level for your wife. There's a lot of talk about this right now because many people feel this may be the answer for some who love beer but suffer from celiac. Check our this article by Papazian:

http://www.examiner.com/article/gluten-free-beer-reduced-gluten-beer-offers-real-beer-taste-for-celiac-impaired

From people's experience on the various forums, there seems to be mixed results. Some find it works great while others not so much. It probably depends on how sensitive a person is. The starting and finishing gavities may also have some effect. More experimentation needs to be done.

Beyond that, I've heard some people have made acceptably tasting gluten-free beers using brown rice syrup.


On 06/17/12 11:26, mjmarsha wrote:

Wife has celiac and likes beer... unfortunately we are limited to the three beers on the shelf (Redbridge, New grist and Bards)... anyone here have experience with gluten free brewing and the results you may have had? I have a recipe for a Blood Orange Hefe that I am going to give a whirl but was curious to know who else out there might have some experience with GF brewing. The recipe I am referring to is http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f75/gluten-free-blood-orange-hefe-181144/ Unfortunately Blood Oranges are out of season so I will have to try another type of orange instead.

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The latest BYO has a brief text in the Mr. Wizard column about this.

I brewed these New Planet beers for a while...

http://newplanetbeer.com/homepage/

They're nothing to praise Ninkasi for, but I have brewed a lot of gluten-free beer and would be happy to help with any questions.

But I would say that if you are going for beer flavor, I would experiment with the Clarex or some equivalent. Gluten-free always seems to trend toward cidery. In which case, I would just choose cider instead.

Quinton, Thanks for the info. What's your take on the recipe in the link I posted in my original post?

I'll be in the Boulder area this fall so we'll definitely sample that beer you mentioned.

From what I can tell Clarex will not render a beer as gluten free, just gluten reduced. My wife has Celiac so any gluten can do her harm.

mjmarsha, I sent you a pm.