Winning Homebrew

How To Filter Homebrew
How To Brew Sour Beer
What Beers Are Gluten-Free?

Posted: 23 Jul 2021 06:03 AM PDT

Are your beers or other spirits cloudy after brewing them? If so, chances are you need to filter your drink before you can get the perfect flavor. Here's everything you should know about how to filter cloudy beer.

Step One: Understand Beer Haze

As professionals are happy to explain, haze in beer isn't fundamentally a bad thing. However, it is unwanted for some types of finished beer.

That's why knowing what beer haze is and what causes it is the first step to filtering homebrew. After all, there's no point in using a filtering process that removes something you want.

What Is Beer Haze?

Beer haze is the collective term for any haze-producing compounds that stay in unfiltered beer and make it anything less than clear. Most experts break this down into two categories: biological and non-biological.

Biological haze is caused by yeast that actively affects the drink, especially during the brewing process. This can also occur because of bacterial contamination in beer.

If you notice that, filtering isn't actually the right solution to your problems. Instead, you'll need to improve your brewing process and emphasize cleanliness throughout the process.

Non-biological haze formation in beer is mainly caused by tannins and proteins, especially when they grow dense enough to modify the appearance of your beer. These are more popular to include in some beers, especially when they can improve the flavor.

Step Two: Pick a Filter

There are many types of filters on the market, though all of them ultimately follow the same basic principle. You need a mesh that's fine enough to block the passage of any particles you want to remove but loose enough to let the drink itself get through.

While experts and commercial brewers can invest in more advanced beer filtration systems, homebrewing options are limited.

This is the same process that people use for filtering drinking water, and in many cases, you can use the same filters. Most household options measure filtering sizes in microns; the smaller the filter, the more it blocks out.

In other words, a fine filter will remove more haze from beer. Whether that's good or bad depends on the drink.

There are several major types of filters you'll find on the market and each filter functions in slightly different ways.

Pleated Filters

Pleated filters are usually spun plastic, aggressively folded to maximize the surface area while minimizing the exterior volume. This makes them a good option in areas where space is limited; although they're not so small, it makes a real difference for most setups.

Pleated filters force liquids from the outside to the center, where you can move them away. Ensuring a watertight seal is essential here, especially if you're adding additional pressure to filter your drink faster.

Wound Filter

Wound filters look a lot like spools of thread, and they're created through surprisingly similar processes. These filters wind the plastic fibers around a central spool in a somewhat irregular way.

While wound filters have their uses, they're a poor choice for most homebrew beers because they usually come in a 20-micron rating. That's too large to filter most things that we want to remove from beer, although you can use it as a first-stage filter in a more complicated setup.

Spun Filter

Spun filters look like long white tubes. While similar to pleated and wound filters, they don't have quite as much surface area as pleated filters. That means you need to clean them more often.

That isn't a big drawback for homebrewing beer unless you're making a lot of beer, but it's enough of an issue that we still prefer pleated filters in most situations.

Spun filters usually block molecules down to about a five-micron rating, which is much better than wound filters.

Ceramic Filters

Finally, you might see some ceramic filters at the store. These are especially common for household water systems, including those that help remove bacteria from water. Ceramic filters are higher-quality options than pleated, wound, or spun filters. Unfortunately, they're too good.

The issue here is that ceramic filters won't just remove harmful things from your beer. They'll remove good things, too, because they're so adept at blocking almost everything except water.

Many people make the mistake of using household ceramic filters and end up with drinks that barely deserve to be called beer, much less award-winning homebrew.

The one case where ceramic filters might be a good choice is if you're intentionally making a light lager. Some large commercial beer breweries use ceramic filters to ensure consistent flavors in their drinks.

Alternatively, you can filter your beer to be extremely light, then add other flavors to it, but that might violate the rules for some competitions.

What Size Filter Should I Get?

For beers, most filters should be between 1 micron and 0.5 microns. Start with a larger filter and see how that affects your drinks, then move to a smaller filter only if the first one didn't filter enough.

It's easy to accidentally go too far and remove more from your beer than you want, so careful testing is essential in getting the correct filter size.

Nominal and Absolute Filters

Aside from everything above, you may see filters labeled as either nominal or absolute.

Nominal filters have pores that are roughly the average size of their official rating, which means a small percent of debris bigger than their rating will still get through.

Some advanced brewers like using these because they can retain a little more of the original materials and flavors in a drink, so don't dismiss them before you try them.

Absolute filters have pores that are the exact size of their efficiency rating, which generally means that nothing of that size or larger should get through.

This means that absolute filters are objectively better at their job, but as we've already established, some imperfections in filtering can be a good thing.

Most filters are nominal, so you may have to go out of your way to find a good choice if you want to use an absolute filter instead.

Step Three: Prepare a CO2/Keg System

This is another place where amateur brewers often make mistakes, but it's not hard to get things right.

While you can theoretically use a gravity-based filtering system, this can be painfully slow in any homebrew setup. The only practical way to filter drinks quickly is to push them through your system and into a keg for holding.

This, of course, presents an immediate problem. We can't use other liquids because those will dilute a beer's flavor, and we can't use air because that will aerate and degrade the finished product. Vacuum-based systems are prone to failures, too.

That's where a complete CO2 kegging system comes into play. Done well; this won't affect the flavor of your beer too much. Alternatively, you can even use it to make carbonated beer and have a nice fizz, though some people prefer non-carbonated drinks instead.

The good news is that a proper kegging setup is easy to get online or from your preferred local store. Just make sure you clean and sanitize every part of your kegging system, including the filter housing. Some people forget to clean out hoses and tubes, and that leads to a nasty bacterial buildup in beers even after you've filtered them.

Finally, consider your access to replacement parts. A great system can still be a poor investment if you can't get new pipes and filters when you need them. Try to set up something that has easy access to replacements for any component.

Assemble your keg system according to the manufacturer's directions. If this is your first time using the system, test it out with distilled water or a similar substitute to ensure everything is alright.

It's common to have a few leaks when you first start, so don't worry about those as long as you can tighten the joints and eliminate them.

Step Four: Filtering Your Beer

Once you're all set up, it's time actually to filter your beer.

Start by sanitizing your kegs and components as usual. Do this even if you cleaned your keg after the last time you used it. It's always better to be careful and clean things right before you use them. Once you have some experience, this shouldn't take long at all.

Next, transfer the beer from your fermenter into your first keg. Purge the keg with CO2, then seal it tightly. We're moving it to a separate keg before filtering because most systems don't work as well if you try to filter straight from the fermenter. As a bonus, you can store your beer in this first container for a while if you need to.

Once you seal the beer in the first container, sanitize your inline filter, the assembly hoses, and the keg you'll be storing the drink in after filtering. Assemble the filter, soaking it beforehand if need be, and start adding CO2 pressure to push your beer through the filter and into the other container.

Check again for leaks while you're doing this. You shouldn't have anything worse than a few small gas leaks. If you see liquid leaks, stop immediately. You can probably salvage the batch, but try to keep your beer as far from oxygen as possible.

Once you've finished pumping successfully, remove the disconnect by the airlock first, then at the dispensing tank. The exact steps may vary slightly depending on the filtration equipment you're using, so double-check your user's manual as necessary.

If all went well, you should now have a keg of well-filtered, brilliant beer. Try to chill it for a little while, but don't wait too long to test your batch and see if it worked out. If it did, you could make more batches of beer the same way. If not, adjust your filtering process as needed to improve the flavor.

Alternatives to Filtering

While filtering is a common and reliable process, it's not the only thing you can do to clear your beer and alter its flavor. Here are some popular alternatives.

Change Your Grains

Changing grains requires brewing a new batch of beer, but changing to a lower-protein grain can remove particles from your beer and lead to a clearer product without any other modifications.

Some people use corn, wheat, or rice as alternatives during mashing, but you can try other grains if you want to be particularly creative with new types of beer. Part of the joy of homebrewing is experimenting with the process to make the perfect drink for your tastes, so it's okay to try different things.

The main drawback to this strategy is that each grain has different requirements for use, so it's hard to recommend one to total amateurs. Be prepared to experiment if you're trying something particularly unusual.

Use a Wort Chiller

For those who aren't familiar with them, wort chillers are rapid cooling systems that take a boiling beer wort below 80 degrees as quickly as possible. Most of them can manage this in less than 15 minutes, which is significantly faster than alternatives like ice baths.

Wort chillers are an excellent alternative to filtering because they change your drink fast enough to make most tannins and proteins fall to the bottom of the container.

That makes it easy to avoid mixing them into your drink, and if they're not in your beer to start with, there's no need to filter them out.

Wort chillers are relatively easy to use and affordable even on amateur budgets. You can even use one alongside a filtering system to make the clearest possible beers.

A multi-step filtering process is fine if you know how much material you're removing from the beer.

Use a Different Yeast Strain

Did you know that yeast strains have different effects on sediment in beer? It's true! Many homebrewers start by looking for a "good" beer yeast under some definition of the term but ignore details like the flocculation rate.

That number shows how fast the yeast cells fall out of beer after fermenting. Higher is generally better here, as it means the beer will clear far quicker. However, yeast has a significant impact on flavor, so it can be hard to find one with the right flocculation strain and the right flavor.

There's no universal answer here because people have different tastes, so try experimenting with different yeast strains to find the one that works best for you.

Lager Your Beer

Lagering isn't the same as using a wort chiller, though both processes rely on processing homebrew beer at the right temperature to adjust the final result. Clarifying beer through lagering usually means storing it just above freezing, usually no higher than 35 degrees, for long enough to clear the beer.

However, there are a few points to keep in mind.

If you're bottling your drink or naturally carbonating it, you shouldn't lager it until your beer is fully carbonated. Otherwise, you'll kill the yeast and end up with a poorly carbonated drink. We want to avoid that sort of thing here.

If needed, you can add about half a teaspoon of rehydrated dry yeast to help fix the drink.

You'll probably have a little sediment in the bottom of your keg or bottle of beer after lagering, but that's acceptable as long as you don't stir it up too much before drinking it.

Use a Fining Agent

Fining agents are an easy alternative to filtering beer, and they're a great option if you're in a hurry.

However, they're not as good as filtering the drink properly (or using a wort chiller to reduce the need for filtering), so you should only consider this route if you're okay with sacrificing a little quality in the name of expedience.

Fining agents adhere to molecules like tannins, proteins, and yeast to make them heavier.

Once they've done that, gravity pulls them to the bottom of the container and helps clear the rest of the drink.

These usually work better in cold beer, and they're especially effective if you combine them with a lagering process.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some common questions people have about how to filter homebrew.

Can You Use a Coffee Filter for Homebrew?

No. Coffee filters usually filter material to 20 microns, which is the same as a lower-quality wound filter. This makes it functionally useless when deciding how to filter homebrew, so you shouldn't bother with it.

Worse, paper coffee filters usually can't stand up to the pressure of a proper kegging system. They're much more likely to tear open and let everything through, which defeats the purpose of filtering.

Finally, coffee filters work much slower than other systems. Many of them only filter a few drops of coffee at a time—far too slow for meaningful amounts of beer.

Is Hazy Beer Unsafe to Drink?

Not always. Many professional brewers have haze in their beer, and they're proud of it, claiming it helps improve the flavor they're creating. The main issue with hazy beer is understanding whether or not you want to keep that haze.

In most cases, a beer that smells and tastes acceptable is okay to drink. Most bacteria can't grow well in beer to start with, so as long as you're sanitizing things correctly, you probably don't need to worry about haze in your beer coming from bacteria.

Try drinking unfiltered homebrew occasionally and compare it to a glass of beer you've filtered. There's no substitute for experience, and making a side-by-side comparison can help you narrow down the process you want to use.

The post How To Filter Homebrew appeared first on Winning Homebrew.

How To Brew Sour Beer

Posted: 23 Jul 2021 05:27 AM PDT

Sour beer is a bit of an acquired taste, but with the explosive growth of craft beer, like IPAs and their sour variants, more and more craft beer drinkers are looking to sour beers as an option.

This is especially true for restaurants, where sour beers pair well with foods containing salty meat, citrus, tangy cheeses, and egg dishes with creamy sauces.

Here's what you should know about brewing sour beer.

Step One: Understand Your Fermenting Options

There are four major options for fermenting sour beers.

Brettanomyces

Sometimes known simply as Brett, this is a common choice for sour brewing. Specific variants offer an incredible variety of flavors, ranging from fruits to hay, sometimes referred to as a “horse blanket” characteristic.

Age has a heavy impact on how well this yeast strain performs, with fruity flavors being more common in shorter fermentation cycles and deeper, earthy tones emerging if fermentation keeps going.

This is a great yeast strain to start with if you're not sure what to use. It's affordable, widely available, and has enough variety for even professional breweries.

Lactobacillus and Pediococcus

These two bacteria strains are an alternative to using Brettanomyces yeast.

Lactobacillus is usually the better of the two strains, producing large amounts of lactic acid (a primary souring agent) in a comparatively short time. However, it's also a little hard to use because it dies quickly in environments with too much isomerized alpha acid.

That means you need to carefully test and regulate your brewing process if you want to use it.

Pediococcus, or pedio, is an easier-to-use alternative to lacto. It takes much longer to sour beer properly, but it tolerates harsh environments much better.

However, this isn't a good bacteria strain to use alone. Instead, it's better to mix it with Brettanomyces to help get rid of any off-flavors.

Notably, pedio also tends to affect the consistency of beer while it's processing things. It's not rare to see a thick, almost rope-like consistency during the sour beer fermentation process, but this usually goes away naturally.

It's not a sign that anything is wrong, so don't dump out your beer if you see that happening.

Open Fermentation

If you're especially bold, you can try open fermentation for this beer style and use wild yeast strains present in the air around you. Open fermentation sometimes produces good beer strains, like those in Belgium, so it's often worth experimenting with at least once or twice.

Open fermentation is generally safe as long as you follow proper brewing protocols and ensure the final result meets industry standards.

Alternatively, this could lead to a foul beer that should go straight into the dump. There's no way to predict what you'll get with open fermentation until you try it, so go in without expectations and see what happens.

Step Two: Pick A Souring Method

Almost every style of beer will go sour eventually, especially if you keep fermenting it. The main reason for this is that all beer has at least some contamination from other ingredients, which will probably sour the final result.

In the old days, most people drank the beer before it got too sour, and that was that. However, people also noticed that some specific varieties of sour beer were good in their own right, ultimately leading to the standardized processes we know today.

There are two broad categories of souring methods: traditional and quick.

Step Three (A): Traditional Souring

The standard method for souring beer uses yeast and bacteria, plus enough time to produce a specific drink.

Traditional souring methods usually start with aged hops, which give more room for yeast and bacteria to begin acting in the drink.

After fermenting the drink regularly, the beers go into wood barrels with cultures of the right bacteria for sourness. Over time, this mix produces the sour beers that we're seeking.

It can take several months to sour a beer properly, especially if you're using pediococcus instead of lactobacillus. Many people wait six months, or even a year, before selling beers aged through this method.

Traditional souring agents work slowly enough that they probably won't build up too much pressure after bottling. If you're still concerned about that, you can filter or process your beer to end fermentation entirely.

Step Three (B): Quick Souring

Sometimes known as cheating, this process rapidly sours a beer without removing too many good flavors. Quick souring works best when making a lactobacillus-based beer but won't work with the more complex flavors of Brettanomyces. There are three main ways to sour a drink quickly, and we'll discuss all of them.

#1: Sour Mashing

Sour mashing follows the basic process for creating a mash, then allowing it to cool to about 115 degrees. You have a little wiggle room here, but try to get as close to 115 as possible.

At this point, you can add lactobacillus cultures (or unmashed base grain, which often has lacto in it) and keep it at this mash temperature for up to four days.

While doing this, remove as much oxygen as possible and avoid any contact with the air. Otherwise, you could contaminate your beer with bacteria from the air, ruining the overall flavor.

Adding a large shot of cultures when you're mashing won't get the same full flavor as a long fermentation process, but many people won't notice the difference as long as the drink is good.

Correct temperature control can be challenging, though, so make sure you have the right equipment for it.

#2: Kettle Souring

The kettle souring process is fundamentally similar to sour mashing, but it takes place later in the process. Make your beer as usual until you get to your wort, cooling it to the same 115 degrees that we like. Add the lactobacillus culture, then flush it to help keep out airborne pests.

Start your boil once you reach the sourness you want. Try to keep the pH as close to 4.5 as you can, adding ingredients like lactic acid if necessary. This helps encourage lactobacillus to do their job while inhibiting the growth of bacteria.

#3: Add Acid Directly

Adding acid is considered cheating in some circles, if only because you're changing the finished beer rather than brewing it sour. However, done well, this is a practical and efficient way to change the final sourness of your beverage.

All you need to do here is purchase a dose of lactic acid and mix it into your beer until you reach the exact sourness you want. Try to avoid overdoing this, but don't be afraid to get creative with your ratios.

Picking a Beer to Brew

While experimenting is good, especially to die-hard home brewers, it often helps to start with some established beer styles. Fortunately, replicating these is relatively easy for experienced brewers.

Berliner Weisse

This German beer is a wheat beer; quite pale and has low amounts of bitterness and alcohol content. These beers tend to have a slightly tart and sour flavor, and many people add fruit flavors to enhance their natural characteristics.

It's easy to brew in small batches at home, and with so many small companies making it, there's plenty of people to ask for help.

Flanders

Belgium's Flanders-style ales are a mid-hued, moderately alcoholic drink low on the bitterness scale. Many of these have cherry, cocoa, and wood-like additional flavors, with the sourness as a distinctive quality.

Creating an excellent Flanders ale requires proper aging in barrels, so it's hard to use some of the cheats described above with this drink.

Amateurs can try it, but this is a better option for experienced brewers who want to try making something more involved than a basic Berliner Weisse.

Lambic

Lambic beers also have their origins in Belgium, probably due to the local bacterial cultures that helped make good sour beers.

Lambics are arguably the most challenging sour beer to make because almost every step of the detailed process differs from how people make other beers. Here are some of the highlights:

Lambics go through an aggressive mashing process, rather than the gentler strategy most methods use
Lambics use well-aged hops instead of newer, fresher ones
Lambics boil several times longer than traditional beer
True lambics have open-air fermentation, which is a bit risky if you don't know what mixed cultures are in your air

That last point is especially tricky because it means that where you decide to brew your beer will significantly impact its final flavor.

Most lambic beers age more than one year so they can develop a good flavor. This method works especially well in somewhat cooler climates that can have more bacteria strains in the air. Hot climates, even if they're humid, may not lead to the same results.

Officially, "real" lambics only come from areas of Belgium close to the Zenne river valley, which produces the bacterial strains that truly started this beer-making style.

Some people refer to lambic-style beers created elsewhere as Methode Traditionelle to help distinguish their point of origin.

Blended Drinks

Many people go one step further and create gueuzes, blends of lambic-style drinks whose components have different ages. Blending can create an incredibly complex array of flavors, especially if you add more fruit while fermenting to infuse the drink with a final flavor.

The main thing to remember here is that you can create some astoundingly diverse sour beers once you understand how to change the brewing process and create the perfect drink. This takes time and experimentation, but the results are generally worth it.

Sour Beer Vs. Wild Beer

Sour beers and wild beers, especially ales, have many similarities. That's not surprising because all beer was originally wild beer, and it's only relatively recently that we've been able to add specific strains of yeast and bacteria to get precisely reproducible complementary flavors.

Wild beers trend towards being sour, with lots of acetic and lactic acids that provide a distinct profile. They also tend to have lighter bodies, so it can be hard to tell them apart at first glance.

Despite these similarities, there are also a few differences worth noting. The biggest one is that wild beer is not necessarily sour. The conditions for creating a sour beer are relatively specific, and any one of several variables going wrong can stop a beer from souring in a standard timeframe.

As noted above, almost any beer will sour eventually. If that takes several extra years, it's usually not worth it. Furthermore, it can be hard to reproduce an authentic flavor with a wild beer, which can be challenging if you want to sell it.

Remember, a drink can be both a sour beer and a wild beer. These aren't mutually exclusive categories because one refers to the flavor while the other refers to the fermenting and development process. The distinction between them isn't as significant as some people think.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some common questions that beer people have about how to brew sour beer.

Is Sour Beer Healthier?

No beer is healthy if you drink too much of it, but sour beers can be more nutritious than other strains. The key difference here is sour beers made with lactobacillus, which is the same thing that makes yogurt healthy. Sour beers that don't use this bacteria strain won't be quite as healthy.

In other words, many sour beers are healthier than traditional beers, but this isn't universal.

Do Sour Beers Have Less Sugar?

Sour beers occasionally, but not always, have less sugar than other types of beer. One of the main reasons for this is that people often add small amounts of fruit and other sweet things while fermenting the drink, improving its flavor and increasing the amount of sugar in it.

Broadly, alcohol-by-volume correlates with the number of calories, and therefore sugar, in any beer. More grain means more sugar when fermenting, which affects the final calorie count.

Sweet-and-sour beers are relatively popular, but some people also minimize the additions to try and let the natural flavors shine through better. As always, the only way to know for sure is to check the drinks individually.

Are Sour Beers Expensive?

Many sour beers are more expensive than other drinks, which holds back a lot of the market growth. The rising popularity is helping with supply issues, but sour beer is still a comparatively small part of the market.

One of the biggest problems in the industry is how long it takes to mature high-quality sours. You can try to speed it along with the processes described above, but when you have to compete on quality, that's not the best approach.

Alcohol is primarily a volume-based system where both time and space impose constraints on things. Every keg aging in a warehouse is a keg that's not getting sold to customers, so you have to sell it at a higher price just to break even.

Sour beers can also have particularly bad flavors if they're not brewed right. They don't have as much margin as other beers, so they take even more care to make just right.

The result of all this is that sour beer will probably remain an expensive, low-volume drink for the foreseeable future.

However, they'll probably grab a somewhat more significant percentage of the market than they currently have. These are beers that focus on quality over quantity, which is why they can be such a treat when you make them yourself.

How Long Does Sour Beer Last?

Sour beer lasts longer than many other types of beer. Many varieties can continue aging in a bottle for several years, and it's not unusual to see a sour beer last at least one year after bottling. Ultimately, no beer lasts forever, but they are a good choice if you want to keep something in storage for a while.

However, as with all beers, it's often better to drink it sooner instead of later. Most beers taste great shortly after bottling, and it's often easier to enjoy it right away rather than risk it turning flat over time.

Should I Put Sour Beer in the Fridge?

Sour beer usually stores best around 50 degrees Fahrenheit. If you need a fridge to reach that temperature, store it there.

However, many cellars and underground areas can reach this temperature with no additional refrigeration needed, so those are viable alternatives to active cooling.

Is Sour Beer Hard to Brew?

Sour beer is somewhat more complicated to brew than regular beer. Even if you're cheating and adding lactic acid after brewing, you'll need to get that ingredient, mix it in properly, and use the right tools to measure the level of acidity before you seal it up.

In other words, it's always harder to brew sour beer than regular beer, although not ridiculously so.

Brewing sour beer correctly may also require additional equipment, up to and including cooling tubs that have some exposure to open air. These can be hard to get in some areas, so many sour beers come from smaller breweries that can focus all of their attention on brewing it well.

The post How To Brew Sour Beer appeared first on Winning Homebrew.

What Beers Are Gluten-Free?

Posted: 23 Jul 2021 02:20 AM PDT

Savor a well-made brew without upsetting your tummy by reaching for a gluten-free beer!

Beer usually consists of water, yeast, hops, and wheat or barley, a recipe that has existed for thousands of years. Barley and wheat, however, contain gluten.

If you have celiac disease, as I do, then gluten-free craft beer represents a welcome new product. But, what beers are gluten-free? Below, Winning Homebrew presents some of the best gluten-free beers and provides insight into the gluten content of some of the most popular beers on the market.

Types of Gluten-free Beer

In 2005, the U.S. government labeled New Grist, a beer brewed by the Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee, WI, as America's first entry in the gluten-free beer category. Since then, more than 30 American breweries have started producing gluten-free beer. Check out our reviews of the best beers available in the gluten-free world.

Ghostfish Shrouded Summit Belgian White Ale

Produced by the Ghostfish Brewing company in Seattle, Washington, this gluten-free brew can challenge any Belgian Wheat Beer (witbier) on the beer scene. The Shrouded Summit Belgian White Ale is made from a combination of millet, buckwheat, and rice and gives off the essence of juniper and citrus. It's available in 12-ounce cans and possesses 4.8% ABV and an IBU of 20.

The brewery also produces seasonal and year-round beers with spicy, sour, and stout notes, as well as a pumpkin ale. Remember to check for seasonal beers that remain gluten-free.

Tasting Notes: Traditional Belgian-style ale with intense flavors of banana, clove, and sweet orange.

Glutenberg Blonde Ale

A gluten-free beer produced in Quebec, Canada, by the Glutenberg microbrewery, Glutenberg Blonde Ale delivers a grainy, balanced taste. This golden beer is made from naturally gluten-free alternative grains, like buckwheat, corn, millet, quinoa, and amaranth, and hit the shelves in 2012. It contains 4.5% ABV and an IBU of 15.

The Glutenberg Blonde Ale has remained popular ever since its first production. The brewery also produces a few IPAs, an American pale ale, and a wheatless blanche inspired by Belgian wheat ales.

Tasting Notes: Mixture of aromas, including white pepper, lemon zest, and floral hops; Tastes of citrus, white flowers, and spicy flavors; Hint of bitterness balances out the sweetness of millet and corn.

Holidaily Brewing Co.

Based in Colorado, the Holidaily Brewing Co. emerged as the first gluten-free brewery in the state and continues to operate as the largest such brewery in the U.S. With multiple awards under its belt, the company continues to grow and expand its distribution centers across the country.

The company produces other gluten-free brown and red ales, a dunkelweizen, and a bourbon-barreled imperial stout. The brewery's Boombastic Hazy IPA won gold at the 2019 Great American Beer Festival and represents a great choice if you have celiac disease but can't hold back on your love for beer.

Most gluten-free products have ABV contents below 6% with varying IBU values, depending on the type of brew. The Favorite Blond Ale serves as the flagship beer of the company.

Tasting Notes: Many of the Holidaily Brewing Company's gluten-free beers taste like caramel and toasted malt.

Omission Lager

Based in Oregon, the Omission Brewing Co. produces barley beers that fall into the reduced-gluten category. The company follows a transparent model by informing its customers regarding the specific gluten content in its products, with gluten content remaining consistently below ten ppm.

With its fruity notes and hoppy essence, the Omission Lager presents beer lovers with a unique choice of gluten-free beer that tastes crisp and refreshing. Brewed with Millenium and Cascade hops, it won several awards against other lagers in its peer group. It contains 4.6% ABV with an IBU score of 20.

Tasting Notes: Smells like sweet biscuits with a pleasant hoppy aroma that includes hints of pine and citrus notes; Sweet taste with flavors of orange and grapefruit.

Ipswich Ale Brewery Celia Saison

The Ipswich Ale Brewery in Massachusetts enjoys a reputation for producing a fine selection of tasty fruit beers, ales, and crisp pilsners. The Ipswich Celia Saison represents a gluten-free, non-seasonal beer that derives its name from the Styrian Celia hops used in the brewing process. This farmhouse-style ale has an ABV content of 6.5%.

Brewed from sorghum, the ale remains naturally free of gluten and gives off a faintly spicy and hoppy taste. The Ipswich Celia Saison stays true to the Belgian-inspired saison-style and delivers the tang of orange and a grainy texture.

Tasting Notes: Floral smell with hints of orange and pepper in the background; Subdued flavor with orange and pepper notes mixed with Belgian yeast.

New Grist

Brewed by the Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the New Grist gluten-free pilsner emerged in 2005. Brewed from sorghum and rice, it possesses a golden yellow tinge and a tart, fruity flavor. Clear and crisp, this beer also presents a malty background taste that lingers on the palate.

The company tests each batch of New Grist beer for gluten content before releasing it for distribution. With 5.1% ABV and an IBU score of 10, you'll find it suits your taste if you like most pilsners and even provides a drinkable option for beer-lovers who do not fancy sorghum-brewed beers.

Tasting Notes: Mild aroma as noted in many saison ales; Slight scent of tart fruit; Balanced sweetness and a fruity essence that tastes even, sharp, and crisp.

Two Brothers Prairie Path Golden Ale

Based in Chicago, Illinois, Two Brothers Artisan Brewing started under the guidance of two brothers and remains family-owned and operated to this day. Along with various other beers, the Two Brothers Artisan Brewery also produces the Prairie Path Golden Ale, a reduced-gluten beer with a 5.1% ABV and 25 IBUs.

The Prairie Path Golden Ale combines a balanced texture and a fruity zip that complements its creamy and mellow aftertaste. It pours a golden color with a white head.

Tasting Notes: Aroma of toasted grain, mild hops, malt, and light Belgian notes; Mild sweetness balances out the slight bitterness; Notes of hay, grain, grass, and citrus; Malty background.

Green's Gluten-free Beers

Crafted by the Belgian brewer Green, Green's Gluten-free Beers come in five different styles: Discovery Amber Ale, Endeavour Dubbel Ale, India Pale Ale, Quest Tripel Ale, and Enterprise Dry-hopped Lager. Made with millet, sorghum, rice, and buckwheat, all of these ales come free of gluten and present a viable option for vegetarians as well.

Green's IPA won two gold stars at the 2015 Great Taste Awards. Judges complimented its "pleasant" and "clean, floral bitter flavor." While containing 5% ABV, Green's IPAs emit a comforting, pear-like aroma and offer a flowery, bitter marmalade taste.

Tasting Notes: Blended scent of spice, citrus, fruity hops, and a multi-grain maltiness; Light, fruity taste with lingering spice notes and a hint of bitterness.

Stone Brewing Delicious IPA

Based in California, Stone Brewing produces a wide variety of IPAs that range from bold to well-balanced. Stone Brewing released the Delicious IPA in 2015 with a 7.7% ABV and 75 IBUs.

True to its name, Stone Brewing Delicious IPA proves delicious and represents a great beer that can hold its own against all other gluten-free beers.

Brewed using a combination of Calypso, Nugget, El Dorado, and Lemondrop hops, this IPA offers a citrusy taste and a dry, bitter finish. It follows the reduced-gluten trend and remains a favorite up and down the west coast.

Tasting Notes: Aroma of spicy, herbal, and citrusy hops balanced with toasted malt; Offers a hoppy taste with hints of lemongrass.

Neumarkter Lammsbräu Pure Lager

Based in Neumarkt, Germany, the Lammsbräu Brewery builds on its nearly four-centuries-long brewing tradition of producing quality organic beers. Neumarkter Lammsbräu Pure Lager represents one of the finest gluten-free, organic pilsners on the gluten-free beer market with a 4.8% ABV.

This gluten-free beer is brewed with only four ingredients—organic barley malt, mineral water, organic hops, and yeast—and remains a popular favorite of the German masses. It provides a clean, crisp taste with hints of toasted malt, all while retaining the taste of traditional beer.

Tasting notes: It tastes like a hoppy and yeasty brew with an otherwise clean flavor; the aroma resembles gluten-rich beer.

The Process of Brewing Beer

Brewing beer involves a long, complex process that centers around fermentation. It uses yeast to aid fermentation, turning grain-based sugars into alcohol. Understanding the process of brewing beer will help you appreciate the work that goes into every bottle. Read on to discover more about the four main ingredients involved in brewing beer.

Water – The main ingredient of beer, making up 90% of the end product
Yeast – A type of fungus, digests the sugar in grains to produce alcohol
Hops – Derived from the plant Humulus lupulus, adds a bitter element to beer
Grain – The primary source of sugar required during the process of fermentation.

Most beers contain gluten because brewers use grains like barley, rye, and wheat. However, a few breweries use millet, buckwheat, rice, corn, amaranth, and other grains to brew gluten-free beers.

Gluten in Different Types of Beer

Gluten can cause several problems in individuals in the beer community with gluten intolerance. It may cause people with celiac disease to suffer intestinal damage, weight loss, diarrhea, malabsorption of nutrients, and more. This makes it essential for people with celiac disease or a gluten allergy to avoid gluten by remaining informed about the gluten content in their food and drink.

Many countries require food and beverages to contain less than 20 ppm (parts per million) of gluten to qualify for the gluten-free tag. Most beers contain higher amounts of gluten than the required 20 ppm, although the difference in the gluten content of each beer boils down to the brewing process and the ingredients used.

Consider the gluten content of the four popular types of beer listed below:

Lager- 63 ppm
Wheat beer – 25,920 ppm
Ale – 3,120 ppm
Stout – 321 ppm

All of the above-listed beers far exceed the recommended gluten content and present an unsafe drinking option for people with celiac disease.

Difference Between Gluten-reduced and Gluten-free Beers

When shopping for gluten-free beers, you'll notice some brands displaying the gluten-reduced label on their bottles. If you have gluten intolerance or celiac disease, you should understand the difference between the two types of beers.

Gluten-free beers represent those that contain 0% gluten. This implies that the ingredients used to brew these beers have no gluten content in them.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration extends this classification to "an ingredient derived from grains, and that has been processed to remove gluten if it results in the food containing 20 or fewer parts per million (ppm) gluten."

Any food or beverage created from gluten-containing ingredients qualifies as gluten-free if the company later removes enough gluten to bring the beer below 20 ppm.

Gluten-reduced beers undergo a process that includes adding an enzyme, such as Brewers Clarex or Clarity Ferm, to remove excess gluten.

Frequently Asked Questions about Gluten-free Beers

At Winning Homebrew, we receive a lot of questions regarding gluten-free beers. Below, we've compiled the answers to some of the most commonly asked questions.

How Is Gluten-free Beer Made?

Breweries utilize one of two processes to manufacture gluten-free beer. The first process uses malt from naturally gluten-free cereals, like sorghum, millet, buckwheat, rice, quinoa, or corn.

The second method involves producing a beer using gluten-containing malts like wheat, rye, or barley and introducing an enzyme during the fermentation process to reduce the gluten content.

Is Gluten-free Beer Safe for People with Celiac Disease?

Made from gluten-free grains instead of wheat or barley, gluten-free beers represent a safe drinking option for celiac disease or gluten intolerance issues.

Does Gluten-free Beer Reduce Bloating?

Although no research demonstrates the benefits of gluten-free beers, many people who drink gluten-free beer attest to the fact that gluten-free products help reduce bloating.

The core ingredients in some gluten-free beers, like sorghum and millet, offer well-known health benefits, such as reducing fatigue levels in people who consume them.

What Removes Gluten from Beer?

The primary ingredients of altered and gluten-removed beers that contain barley, wheat, and rye undergo an enzyme treatment during the fermentation process.

The enzyme breaks down the protein chains that make up gluten. This helps gluten-removed beers classify as gluten-free beers according to the classification provided by the FDA.

So Which Gluten-free Beer Should You Choose?

Gluten-reduced beers enjoy an edge over gluten-free beers because they taste more like traditional beers brewed from wheat, barley, or rye. However, gluten-reduced beers may not represent the safest option for people with gluten intolerance or celiac disease.

Instead, opting for 100% gluten-free beers made from ingredients like millet, buckwheat, sorghum, corn, or rice represents the safest option.

Although commercial gluten-free brewing presents a formidable challenge because of the cost of the ingredients and the sanitizing equipment required, a fair number of breweries produce gluten-free beers on a large scale.

These breweries ensure that the tag 'gluten-free' does not necessarily imply a lack of taste. You'll find plenty of great-tasting, gluten-free beers available in stores and online.

We hope this article helped shed a little light on the gluten-free beer industry and how it presents a viable option for beer-lovers who suffer from celiac disease. If you still don't know which gluten-free beer brands to try, purchase a few bottles of the original gluten-free beer: New Grist.

The post What Beers Are Gluten-Free? appeared first on Winning Homebrew.

How To Make Wine

Friday, July 23, 2021