Zero Tolerance: Brewing Truly Gluten-Free Beer

This article originally appeared in the March/April 2019 issue of Zymurgy Magazine

By Joe Morris

Many brewers view a disease like celiac or non-celiac gluten intolerance as a career ender. In actuality, nothing could be further from the truth. For many of us, a medical diagnosis opens the door to one of the greatest and most fulfilling challenges a brewer can face: learning to brew truly delicious beer without using barley, wheat, or rye.

If you brew gluten-free beer, chances are someone told you that you have to do it that way. No one really seeks out gluten-free brewing as a first option. There is an inside joke among gluten-free brewers that it’s “twice as hard and four times more expensive.” It’s not for the faint of heart.

The most common paths to gluten-free homebrewing are threefold…