About 1% of the population suffers from a condition known as Coeliac Disease (see below), and using products that have gluten in them, like drinking ¨normal¨ beer will make them ill.
Gluten free beer is just beer made without using barley and wheat as these grains contain gluten. In a lot of ways it's no big deal, the Africans and other cultures have been making beer using local grains that don't contain gluten for thousands of years. The challenge is to make a gluten free European style beer with these grains.
Humans have been very inventive in finding ways to make alcoholic drinks, and we have been doing it for a very long time. Mead was likely to be the first drink, and we have been making that for at least 7,000 years. If we take beer to mean a non-distilled alcoholic drink made by fermenting sugars derived from natural starch, then the list of foods that have been used world wide is quite long :- barley, wheat, rye, oats, corn, sorghum, millet, buckwheat, rice, cassava, tapioca, manioc, amaranth, etc. Note that a coeliac only need to avoid the first four grains in this list, as they contain gluten. The rest are gluten free, and they can be used safely to make beer for a coeliac sensitive drinker.
Barley is most commonly used ingredient to make a European style beer, and for good reason. For making beer, barley is brilliant! Mind you, over the thousands of years we have been using it, we have improved it no end, using selective breeding to make it better and better for making beer. Barley has been manipulated to such an extent, that in every aspect of brewing, its the perfect ingredient to use, from its ability to be malted, to the final presentation of a beer. Modern barley's characteristics are interwoven in almost every aspect to a "modern" brewing practice.
Making gluten free beer is not as easy as making "normal" beer for this reason. Also you cannot buy any gluten free malts or gluten free extracts, and all the liquid yeasts are grown on gluten containing mediums. The normal beer supply chain is naturally geared to supply "barley based" products. Another problem is that all the gluten free grains have a high gelatinisation temperature, so a simple infusion mash will give very poor results. Special techniques are needed both for malting the grain and for the mash, but it can be done.
Circumstances changed for gluten free brewers, for in the 1980's the Nigerian Government, due to foreign currency problems, restricted the importation of barley and barley malt, and made the local breweries use sorghum instead. This action resulted in a lot of research into using sorghum and millet to make European style beers. This research addressed the major problems of using sorghum and millet to make beer, and gives someone wanting to make gluten free beer a very good starting point for further research and development.
We grow a lot of sorghum in Australia, but it is not currently used for human consumption. We use it as animal fodder or export it. Its interesting to note that Australia is exporting sorghum to South Africa, and they use it for malting to make the African native beers. So the sorghum available in Australia as animal fodder is very suitable for making beer for of course human indulgence.
Barley makes beers of a taste we are familiar with. Those who have had wheat beers know these beers have a different taste due to the characteristics of the grain. So, its only natural that gluten free grains will have their own taste, and you wont be able to make a gluten free beer that tastes exactly the same as any "normal" beer. But on the plus side, brewers making beers with gluten free ingredients are actually developing new beer styles, and this can be based on traditional styles, or be your own original creation. You can make good gluten free beer from sorghum, I have done it. This is not just my opinion, tasters have included professional beer judges, who have been impressed with the results.
When you go to see your local quack after feeling crook for quite a while and you are told ¨We have good news, and we have bad news, which would you like to hear first?¨, you know you probably should not have gotten out of bed that morning.
When you are told you have Coeliac Disease, the good news is: You have Coeliac Disease, there is no expensive treatment or medicines you need. You just have to avoid a few food products that contain glutens and you will be back to normal.
The bad news is: You must avoid everything made from wheat, barley, oats and rye, and do this for the rest of your life.
If you are lucky, your doctor will advise you to join the Coeliac Society, advise you to see a dietitian, and explain the basics of the diet and that gluten free food is available in supermarkets and health food stores. Not too bad, you think, I just need to buy some special foods such as bread, pasta, biscuits and cakes, the rest of the diet should not to change too much.
Wrong!! Wheat products are cheap in Australia, and it is used in many processed foods and to make many additives and sugars. Beer contains malted barley and glutens make it to the final product, so its out. Any product that contains malt, malt extract, and even yeast extract (it has probably been grown on barley malt) are out. Definitely beer yeast products are out. So out goes Vegemite, Promite, Marmite, most breakfast cereals (most contain malt extract), Worcestershire sauce (malt vinegar), and even some of the humble tomato sauces (wheat based thickeners).
Gluten based products are everywhere. So no fish and chips (fish is battered with wheat flour). How about grilled fish and chips? Wrong again, grilled fish is floured first, and both the grill and deep fryer will be contaminated with gluten. They have been used for cooking things that contain wheat products and there's enough left behind in the oil to make you sick. Ok, so Chinese/Japanese food starts to look good. Food based around rice should be fine, until you look more closely at some of the ingredients: soy sauce - its fermented using wheat, noodles - a lot are made out of wheat. In fact Thai food turns out to be one of the best bets (fish sauce should contain no wheat), just watch what the noodles are made from.
So eating out can be very difficult, when you ask what the food is made of, some chefs will think you are on some fad diet, don't understand the disease, or think a little bit won't hurt you (it does). Once a coeliac eats some gluten, it takes a few hours for the symptoms to appear, and about a week to recover and feel good again. After a couple of accidents like this, most Coeliacs end up very wary about eating out.
But all is not lost. Eventually you do find that most things do have gluten free alternatives. Because they are not as common as mainstream ingredients, they can be hard to find, and cost a lot more, but they can be found. If you can't cook, now would be a great time to learn if you get this disease, as most pre-packaged food contains gluten. The benefits:- if you stick to the diet, you feel a hell of a lot better, and you eat a lot more fresh food.
More information about Coeliac Disease can be found at: