As I have mentioned before, low gluten beer is not gluten free beer. I am of the opinion that any standard other than 0 gluten is only to allow corporations to produce an almost gluten free product and call it gluten free. There is a group out of Australia that has been studying this fact, especially when it comes to gluten free beer, CSIRO Food Futures National Research Flagship. They recently published a copyrighted report that I wanted to read, unfortunately they are not at liberty to share the report at this time because of the copyright laws. I did get a response from the organizations Communications Director that told me:
“Dr Matthew Morell, Theme Leader for the Future Grains, Grain-Based Food and Feed Theme within CSIRO’s Food Futures Flagship, is the best person to answer your question about the study.
Please find below his response to your question:
CSIRO has been working to develop a method to quantify gluten (known in barley as hordeins) in beer. The focus of this research is the successful development of a new method for detecting hordeins. Beers were tested and reported as a means of validating the method developed. Our method will need to be further tested and validated in other laboratories before it can be approved as a standard method for detecting hordeins in beer. Until these validation studies are completed, results for specific brands of beer will not be released.
This new method is good news for coeliacs and people with gluten intolerance as it provides a new, higher sensitivity method to confirm that beers claiming to be hordein-free do not contain hordein. Our analysis found that non-barley based beers labelled as gluten free did not contain hordeins.”
If this research can be repeated at other facilities, this testing could revolutionize the gluten free beer industry and I and my wife would welcome the change. Certainly not that we want to see fewer gluten free brewers, but we want to have fewer questions about what is really gluten free and what is not. Most of the brewers in the US will easily meet the standard that even Dr. Morell and his team have developed.
