Coeliac Disease, Brewing and Gluten Free Beer

Robert Hinterding
Silly Yak Foods Pty. Ltd
PO Box 707,
Northcote 3070
rhh@sillyyak.com.au

Peter Aldred
School of Science & Engineering
University of Ballarat
PO Box 663,
Ballarat, 3353
p.aldred@ballarat.edu.au
Abstract

Coeliac Disease is an autoimmune condition in which a reaction to a sequence

of amino acids in prolamins from the cereals wheat, rye, barley, oats, spelt, kamut
or their hybridised strains causes damage to the small intestine. This leads to
malabsorption problems and an increased risk of certain types of cancer. The only
cure is to avoid consuming all food which contains these cereals. The common
name for these prolamins is gluten and hence coeliacs must adhere to a gluten
free diet. The current estimate is that at least 1% of the population is affected by
coeliac disease, making it the most common of the genetic disorders. Adhering
to a gluten free diet is difficult as many processed convenience foods contain
gluten. To assist people with food intolerances and allergies, ingredient listing
and allergen labelling is becoming mandatory worldwide. There are also separate
rules on what can be labelled as gluten free. Beer is one beverage coeliacs
are advised to avoid and until recently there has been no acceptable alternative.
Whilst beers made from gluten free ingredients are now becoming available, there
is still confusion about whether beers brewed from barley are safe for coeliacs
because of the limitations of the currently available gluten testing. This paper
examines the issues of whether normal beer is gluten free, the limitations of the
current tests and the regulatory environment of allergen listing and gluten free
labelling. We also examine the grains and methods which can be used to make
beer from naturally gluten free ingredients and the problems encountered in both
malting and brewing with these ingredients.

Introduction

Coeliac Disease is a condition which about 1% of the population [2, 15] suffers from
and these people must avoid all food and drink made from wheat, rye, barley, oats,
spelt, kamut or their hybridised strains. As there is no cure, Coeliacs are advised to
1

follow a gluten free diet where products made from these grains are avoided. Avoiding all food and drink made from these grains is difficult. The compulsory inclusion
of ingredient lists and allergen labelling, where it is required, has made the task easier.
There are also regulations on what may be labelled as gluten free [3]. In Australia to
be labelled as gluten free, food must contain no detectable gluten 1 and not contain any
oats or anything derived from a malted gluten containing grain. In Europe most countries have adopted the level of 200 ppm set by Codex Alimentarius, although some
countries have set the allowable level to 20 ppm. However the current allowable level
set by Codex Alimentarius is being reconsidered [4]
For most foods, acceptable alternatives not containing these grains have been developed, but some products have been more difficult. Beer is one of these. Coeliacs
are advised not to drink beer but to drink cider, wine or some of the spirits instead
[15]. The problem is for a lot of people there is nothing like a beer. Some Coeliacs
are tempted to still drink beer, and this problem has been made worse by some of the
manufacturers of beer claiming that their beer tests low gluten or gluten free when the
currently available test is known to give false negatives for beer brewed from barley
[11].
The requirements for ingredient listing and allergen labelling are not uniform for
all food and drinks, and the requirements also vary between countries. Also, as the
research into Coeliac Disease progresses and better and more comprehensive tests are
developed for detecting the level of gluten in food and drinks, the requirements and
the testing required are becoming more stringent.
In the last few years a number of beers have been developed especially for Coeliacs
using gluten free grains. The grains used include rice, maize, buckwheat and sorghum.
While the beers were first based on unmalted grains, beer based on malted gluten free
grains are now becoming available. The malting and brewing using gluten free grains
is more difficult, and there are also contamination issues which must be addressed. We
discuss the problems of making beer from these grains, and the different processing
requirements.
The paper is organized as follows. The next section discusses Coeliac Disease.
Section 3 discusses the ELISA test, and Section 4 looks at brewing gluten free beer.
Section 5 concludes the paper.

Coeliac Disease

Coeliac Disease is an autoimmune condition in which a reaction to a sequence of

amino acids in prolamins from the cereals wheat, rye, barley, oats, spelt, kamut or
their hybridised strains causes damage to the small intestine. This leads to malabsorption problems and an increased risk of certain types of cancer. The only cure is to
avoid consuming all food which contains these cereals. The common name for these
1

the current limit of dedection is 5 ppm.

prolamins is gluten and hence coeliacs must adhere to a gluten free diet.
This condition was described in 250 AD by Galen, a Roman doctor, but it was not
until after the Second World War that its causes were discovered. Dicke [8], a doctor
in the Netherlands, found his Coeliac patients felt much better during the famine at the
end of World War II when grain products were very scarce, and became worse again
after the war when bread and wheat flour was flown in from Sweden, and identified
wheat as one of the causes. Since then a lot more has been discovered about the
disease, and also the role of the immune system which was discovered in the 1980s.
The disease has a genetic background, but as about 30% of the population [2] has
at least one of the genes, this is not sufficient to indicate the presence of the condition.
There must some triggering event as well. Also, the incidence is higher in countries
such as Ireland and Finland where wheat was introduced more recently.
The rate of diagnosis has increased as doctors have been educated about the disease
and its symptoms. One of the problems is there is no typical set of symptoms, some of
the blood tests used are not conclusive, and some sufferers have no obvious symptoms.
The advent of compulsory ingredient listing and allergen labelling has made it
easier to determine which food products contain gluten. In some countries there are
also regulations on when foods may be labelled gluten free. Unfortunately, these
rules are not consistent between countries. The criteria for labelling food gluten free
can be based on testing only (Europe), and exclusion of certain ingredients (oats and
malted gluten containing grains) with testing (Australia and New Zealand).

ELISA Test

The current commercially used test for the presence of gluten is the ELISA test2 , this
test is known to detect the presence of gluten from oats and barley poorly [12, 11, 22],
and is even worse if the grain has been enzymatically processed or charred. It is for
this reason that food cannot be labelled gluten free if it contains oats and malted
gluten containing grains in Australia and New Zealand [3, Sec 1.2.8].
Some manufacturers still say that their products test gluten free or low gluten
when these ingredients are used, also some products currently labelled as gluten free
in Australia still contain ingredients such as malt extract.
The current ELISA test was developed to detect the gliadin protein in wheat, it does
this well as it can currently detect levels down to 5 ppm, but does not detect the hordein
protein from barley well at all. A new ELISA test is being developed in Europe, the
R5ELISA test [22, 23, 12], this test can detect lower levels of the gliadin protein, and
is also highly reactive to the hordein protein from barley.
A example of the use of the new R5ELISA occured in November 2005 when the
Coeliac Society of the UK sent an email to all its members that it no longer considered
a large range of breakfast cereals flavoured with barley malt to be gluten free. In the
2

This test was developed by the CSIRO

UK foods must contain less than 200 ppm gluten as measured by the current ELISA
test to be labelled as gluten free, but testing with the new R5ELISA test revealed
levels above the 200 ppm threshold.

Beer

To make a gluten free beer, because of the labelling requirements and the limitations
of the the current ELISA test, we are restricted to using only gluten free ingredients,
and we have no reliable way of measuring the level of contamination from ingredients
or from the brewery equipment used also to make normal beer.
On the question of ingredients, we took the conservative and safe approach of using
no ingredients which contain, or are derived from, or propagated on gluten containing
grains. This meant that liquid yeasts could not be used as they are propagated on barley
wort, and Australian produced dextrose could not be used as it is derived from wheat
starch.
Some of the gluten free beers around the world are based on a hopped mead
(Passover Honey Beer, USA), sugar syrups (Hambleton Ales, UK), unmalted grains
(Bi-Aglut, Italy) or malted sorghum (Bards Beer, USA; Silly Yaks and OBriens, Australia). We decided early on to explore the malting of sorghum as a basis for making
the beer for a number of reasons:
We tested beer made from rice, buckwheat and sorghum, and found the beer
made from sorghum had the best taste.
The malting of a grain gives important flavour contributions as well as developing the enzymes needed to convert the starches to sugars.
A lot of sorghum is grown in Australia and it is available at a reasonable price.
Sorghum has been used for making African native beers for thousands of years
[20, 21].
Published research is available on malting sorghum and using sorghum to make
European style beers.

4.1

Malting Sorghum

Sorghum is a tropical cereal which is reasonably drought tolerant and is grown extensively in Africa [6], Asia, Australia and the USA. It will grow in areas too hot to
grow barley and wheat, it is used for human consumption in Africa and Asia, but in
Australia and the USA it is used primarily as stock or bird feed.
The use of sorghum as an ingredient or adjunct in brewing beer was explored in the
past, but it was thought it would not develop sufficient enzymes to convert itself, and

its high gelatinisation temperature was seen as a disadvantage in using it as a cheap

source of starch.
In the 1980s Nigeria restricted the importation of barley and barley malt and research into the use of sorghum as an alternative to barley for making European style
beers was undertaken seriously. It has since been found that sorghum malt does develop sufficient enzymes to convert itself, the problem had been the way it was malted.
To maximise the development of enzymes the steeping and germination temperature
of sorghum needs to be around 30o C [13, 14, 17, 16, 18, 19, 5].
The differences between sorghum and barley malt are summarised in Table 1. The
amylase enzymes in sorghum malt are more heat sensitive than those of barley. This
combined with the lower levels of enzymes means that sorghum malt can only be
kilned at low temperatures otherwise too many of the enzymes will be destroyed. Another problem with sorghum malt is that the cell walls are not destroyed well during
malting because of the low levels of glucanase produced during malting [9, 1].
As a normal barley malting plant is not set up to work at the elevated steeping
and germination temperatures for malting sorghum, a small malting plant near Swan
Hill was modified so that sorghum could be malted. Equipment was installed so that
the steeping water could be heated to the required temperature, a water filtration was
added to ensure the steeping water was clean and sterile, and the steeping process was
automated as frequent changes of steeping water and multiple airrests are done to
minimise the chance of bacterial or fungal infections at these elevated temperatures.
Table 1: Summary of malt differences
Malt
Barley
Sorghum

4.2

DP
high
low

amylase
mod
high

amylase
high
low

losses
low
high

husk
yes
no

Brewing with Sorghum Malt

In brewing with sorghum malt, the following problems need to be addressed:

High gelatinisation temperature in the range of 68o C 78o C.
Low diastatic power and low levels of amylase
Amylase enzymes are more heat sensitive than those of barley.
Cell walls not well degraded during malting.
Sorghum has no husk.

To get a good rate of extraction from sorghum malt, a hammer mill is generally
used to grind the malt, this helps with the problem of poor cell wall degradation, and
as there is no husk to preserve has no disadvantages. A further advantage of using a
hammer mill is that it can be dedicated to milling gluten free grains and hence removes
one of the major sources of contamination in a brewery as it would be extremely difficult to clean the normal malt mill.A glucanase rest (4045o C) and the addition of
glucanase can also be of help.
The high gelatinisation temperature [9, 1] and the fact that the enzymes in sorghum
are more heat sensitive, means that the brewery must be capable of a decoction mash.
An infusion mash is ineffective as by the time the starches have been gelatinised, the
amylase enzymes, especially the amylase have been destroyed. Also the low
diastatic power means a long saccharifiaction rest must be used, and the temperature
must be controlled well so as not to denature the amylase.
The method which seems to work best is a slightly modified form of a Schmitz
process decoction [7]. This involves removal of the clear wort from the top of the
mash after a protein rest, and boiling the remaining thick wort, then cooling the boiled
thick wort down and then adding the thin clear wort back so that the saccharification
rest can now proceed. The purpose of this process is first to dissolve the enzymes in the
wort, then to recover sufficient of the enzymes with the thin wort and keep them safe
while the thick wort is boiled to gelatinise the starches. When the thick boiled wort is
cooled down and recombined the with the thin wort, we have gelatinised starches and
active amylase enzymes so the conversion of the starches to sugars can proceed.
To separate the clear wort from the grist either a mash filter must be used, or if
using a lauter tun then rice hulls need to be added so that a filter bed can be formed.
The sorghum grist is much denser than barley grist, this can cause problems during
brewing as it can settle into quite a solid mass if left to settle for too long.
The brewing plant must be thoroughly cleaned before brewing a gluten free beer
to remove all traces of gluten from brewing normal beer. A separate malt mill must
be used as it is not possible to clean satisfactorily, and heat exchangers should be be
thoroughly cleaned.
The changes made at the brewery have included duplication of the malt milling and
handling equipment and installation of a separate pump to transfer the thin clear wort
from above the settled grist in the mash tun. A continuing problem is how to quickly
cool down the boiled grist before it is recombined with the thin wort which contains
the active enzymes.
A further problem identified with sorghum malt is that it is not as stable a barley
malt, and the diastatic power of dropped by 29% after six months of storage [10].

4.3

Fermentation

The issues here are:

If using dried yeasts, only a limited range is available.
6

 The yeast can produce different esters than those expected.

The balance of sugars is different.
The flavour profile you get with sorghum worts is not the same as you would get
using the same yeast in a barley wort, the ratios of the various amino acids and also
the ratio of the various sugars is different. We have found that yeast which produces
low levels of esters will help reduce the sourness and astringency that sorghum beers
tend to display.
Sorghum worts produce a quite different balance of sugars [9],there is much more
glucose, maltotriose and fructose produced (see Table 2). The high levels of glucose
(30%), can mean that some yeasts lose the ability to ferment maltose [24].
Table 2: Percentage of Sugars in Sorghum and Barley Worts [9]
Sugar
Fructose
Glucose
Sucrose
Maltose
Maltotriose

Sorghum
3.5
29.9
0.4
52.5
13.7

Barley
1.8
11.9
4.2
70.5
11.7

Also if the yeast cannot ferment maltotriose, the beer may end up sweeter than
desired because of its level in the final beer.

Summary and Conclusions

The development of a gluten free beer based on malted sorghum has been achieved,
but the amount of research and the development time was much more than expected.
Malting sorghum and brewing a beer based on sorghum malt is basically the same as
using barley, but it is all the details that are different. Discovering these details and
how to deal with them is what has taken most of the time.
We have shown that it is possible to produce a gluten free beer which is acceptable
to both coeliacs and noncoeliacs alike. The consistent comment we get is that it
tastes like beer.

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