USA: Brewers tapping gluten-free beer

The demand for gluten-free products has grown in recent years as physicians have increasingly diagnosed celiacs - now estimated to number 3 million people in the United States - and embraced studies suggesting gluten and similar proteins cause a wide range of illnesses, Associated Press communicates on March 31. Considering the potential for cross-contamination, unaffected family members often go gluten-free as well, further expanding the market.

Beer is a recent entry into the product pool. Bard’s Tale is only the third U.S. brewery to produce a gluten-free beer and the first to try it with nothing but malted grain.Lakefront Brewery Inc. of Milwaukee, Wis., makes New Grist out of sorghum and rice, while Ramapo Valley Brewing in Hillburn, N.Y., makes Passover Honey Beer by adding hops to honey and molasses.

Dragon’s Gold hit the market in 11 states in November 2004 and took off, quickly reaching the limit of the company’s 2,400-barrel capacity. Bard’s Tale pulled it off the shelves in the summer after its contract brewer in New York experienced production problems that caused bottles to explode.

The company is now working with a much larger brewer on the West Coast and expects to hit the ground running at 15,000 barrels and make at least 70,000 barrels by 2011.

That’s still minuscule in a domestic beer market that produced more than 205 million barrels last year, according to Beer Marketer’s Insights. Beer marketers say they don’t know how big the gluten-free market is because it’s too small and too new.

"It has gone from utterly nothing to something we have written articles on and commercial producers are getting involved in," said Ray Daniels with the Brewers Association, a craft brewing group based in Boulder, Colo., adding that he hadn’t even heard of gluten-free beer until fielding a question from a home-brewing enthusiast five years ago.

Still, Daniels said he has tasted African beers made from sorghum and teff, another grain, and is unsure how successful an alternative grain-based beer can be.“There’s a huge challenge there from a flavor view because barley is such an important part of the flavor of beer," he said.

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