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This is a question more our of interest than anything else, but might be useful for those unfortunate enough to be affected by gluten. A conversation came about, in a pub strangely enough, about how one would go about making gluten free beer (one of the people present couldn't eat/drink products with gluten).

My understanding is that both wheat and barley contain gluten and as such can't be used. I've been told that gluten free beer exists but tastes pretty bad. So how is gluten free beer made? Is it just a combination of rice starches and corn/maize sugars and the like? Is it possible to make a nice gluten free beer?

I believe Sorghum and buckwheat are the main cereals used. There is one you see fairly regularly but i have never tried it. And then there is cider wine etc which should be fine?

Yeah, wine and cider are fine, coeliac person i know drinks wine. I reckon mead is fine too. I'll have to have a google around for those grains and get a description.

I doubt i'll ever actually go to the trouble of making one, unless there's a guarantee from someone else that they taste nice, then i'll consider it. I'd be interested to try a commercial one if anybody knows of any.

"TheSolutionTo":2wgmpufy wrote: I'd be interested to try a commercial one if anybody knows of any.[/quote:2wgmpufy]Any specialist beer off licence will have a range of them - Glutaner and Heron are the commonest.

I recently saw bottle of coeliac friendly Estrella Damm beer ( spanish Lager ) in the Abbots Ale House in Cork , and another ale , can't remember the name , but it was made from Sorghum alright ,

Sorghum is apparently a hugely used flour in India

Sorghum is an african grain and is widely used in southern african beer I think. "The Homebrewer's Garden" says that beer with sorgum in it outsells beer without 7-1 in South Africa, so much so that Guinness had to adapt its recipe. I think you could easily make a decent beer from sorghum alone. You can also use amaranth, which is a nutty flavoured south american grain which was widely used by the aztecs and incas. Corn is also gluten free and could be used to add fermentables. Apparently the jury is out as to whether oats are ok for coeliacs, but if it was ok that would be a really useful body enhancing ingredient. I think you can buy oats that haven't been near any wheat or barley, from special coeliac stores. Of course you also have Spelt, which is an ancient form of wheat but which is ok for gluten intolerant folk

the homebrewer's garden has a recipe for a beer that just uses sorghum, 2.3kg sorghum malt, 227g raw sorghum, 227g millet or flaked corn, 227g sorghum syrup, and whitbread or london ale yeast. that's for only 4l so you're looking at a lot of sorghum for not too much yield it seems.

weyermann.de do spelt malt.