A couple of years back I assembled a panel of friends who had various degrees of gluten intolerance to test out the gluten-free beer on the market. It seemed only fair since at the time the handful of products available could hardly be considered stellar examples of beer. The panel confirmed that. While they were appreciative of the efforts the breweries took to make a gluten-free beer, they were a bit underwhelmed at the flavour. I also did a post on it (here) where you can find a link to the original story.

Well, things have changed significantly on the gluten-free front, with almost a dozen new brands for sale in Alberta, including one from Red Deer’s Drummond Brewing. It seemed the time was right to re-assemble the panel and see if the newer products rate higher than their predecessors.

I did the panel initially for a CBC column during the spring, but since the good folks at the Mothercorp have not been posting my columns on the webpage (I blame Stephen Harper), I have been unable to link to them here at onbeer.org. However, I also  turned it into a piece that ran in Vue Weekly last week and which you can read here.

We tested 6 gluten-free beer: Drummond Gluten-Free; Nickelbrook Gluten-Free; Mongozo Premium Pilsner; Brasseurs Sans Gluten Pale Ale and Amber Ale; and Wold Top Against the Grain. I won’t provide all the details of the panel’s response (that is what the Vue article is for), but can say that, in general, the beer fared much better than the first round.

Most still possessed a strange harshness in the finish, which I have come to believe is due to the use of buckwheat. But the beer were flavourful and between them offered something for everyone. Many appreciated the simple, amber lager qualities of Drummond’s effort, while the more hop-oriented panel members gravitated to BSG’s Pale Ale, which unquestioningly has a classic pale ale hop character.

The top-rated beer was Mongozo Pilsner. I was surprised how soft and delicate it was (although the hopping rate was too low for a true pilsner). As I note in the column, unlike the other beer who use alternative ingredients such as buckwheat, rice, sorghum, millet, etc., Mongozo brews their beer with malted barley and then removes residual gluten through an unspecified process. Thus they can only guarantee gluten levels below 10ppm. For many who struggle with gluten, that will be sufficiently low, but those who are very sensitive should exercise caution.

My assessment is that the world of gluten-free beer is coming along quite nicely. Brewers are figuring out how to finesse their less-than-ideal ingredients and recognizing that just because there is no barley doesn’t mean the beer needs to be boring. Good thing for gluten-intolerant lovers of beer.