Serve in a pint at 4-7 °C
What it tastes like
Gluten-free beer is made from grains that contain no gluten: sorghum, millet, rice, buckwheat or maize. It is a method rather than a flavour, so you will find gluten-free lagers, pale ales, IPAs and stouts. The difficulty is that barley malt does a lot of the work in normal brewing. It brings its own enzymes, a husk that forms the filter bed in the mash tun, and the proteins that hold a head of foam. Without it, brewers rely on malted millet or sorghum, added enzymes and patient lautering.
Sorghum gives a tangy, slightly sour, molasses-like note that early gluten-free beers were known for. Malted millet and rice brew cleaner and lighter. Many modern versions lean on hops to carry flavour, which is why gluten-free pale ales often taste closest to their barley cousins. There is also gluten-reduced beer, brewed from barley and then treated with an enzyme. That is a different product, labelled differently from country to country, and anyone with coeliac disease should take medical advice before trying it.
Style profile
- Look
- Any colour, depending on the recipe. Foam is often thinner and shorter-lived than in barley beer, since barley's head-forming proteins are missing.
- Aroma and flavour
- Sorghum brings a tart, slightly molasses edge; millet and rice are cleaner and lighter. Hops, fruit or roasted grains often carry most of the flavour.
- Mouthfeel
- Usually light to medium body, sometimes thin, with brisk carbonation. Brewers may use maltodextrin or roasted gluten-free grains to build fullness.
- Ingredients
- Malted sorghum, millet, rice, buckwheat or maize, often with added enzymes to convert the starch. Hops and yeast as in any beer, with care that nothing in the brewhouse carries gluten.
In India
India should be good at this. We grow more millet than almost anyone, jowar and bajra are everyday grains in Maharashtra, Karnataka and Rajasthan, and rice is already a common adjunct in Indian lager. Brewers in Pune and Bengaluru have made beers with large shares of bajra and ragi. Those still contain some barley, though, so they are not gluten-free. A truly gluten-free beer needs a dedicated brewhouse or very careful cleaning to avoid cross-contact, which is the expensive part. If you need one, read the label closely and ask how it was made.
At the Indian table
Food pairings contributed by Anuradha Rao
- Ragi mudde with bassaruA millet beer beside a millet ball is a neat echo, and the light body leaves room for the tangy lentil saaru.
- Amritsari fishA crisp, light beer does what any good lager does with fried fish, and the ajwain in the besan batter likes a dry finish.
- Rice payasam with jaggeryA rice-based beer and a rice pudding share a soft, clean grain note, and the bubbles lift the weight of the jaggery.
Brewed in India
We have not found a fully gluten-free beer brewed commercially in India. Indian millet beers we know of still use some barley, so they are not gluten-free. Check imported labels carefully.