Beer and Gluten

Gluten-free beers are all the rage, barley and wheat the villains to be avoided.

Alternatives have been available throughout the brewing ages. Sorghum and rice are without gluten and are, therefore, digestible by those who are sensitive. The Celiac Revolution is at hand.

For millennia, people have used the ingredients available to them to brew beer. Throughout documented history humans have figured a way to alter their consciousnesses. Fermenting grain was one way to accomplish that goal.

As I've written before, barley -- plentiful across Britain -- lent itself well to English ales, the water at Burton-on-Trent facilitating hoppy offerings. Wheat was plentiful in Germany, thus was born the hefeweizen, extracting the sugars from that grain.

Rice -- the chief crop in the East -- is often associated, in wine form, with sake. The Japanese have used rice to brew beer for centuries. Sapporo and Kirin are classics, their finish desert-dry. American macro brewers have used rice and corn, cheaper than barley, to reduce their cost of production. Note: Neither Kirin nor Sapporo are gluten-free.

In Africa, sorghum was in abundance, the sugars fermentable.

To serve celiacs these days, brewers have been using rice, sorghum, millet, maize, sunflowers and buckwheat as alternatives to glutenous barley and wheat monocots.

Today, to meet demand, breweries are brewing gluten-free beers. Lakefront brews New Grist. St. Peter's makes multiple styles. Ask for them at your enlightened local liquor emporium. Of course, Whole Foods Market offers much to those with detailed diets.

Some people are digestively sensitive. Those with Celiac Disease understand.

Others are adversely affected in their joints, encumbered by arthritis. A friend of mine, every time she drank her fave -- Blue Moon -- was unable to grip a knife effectively the next day, creating a near-suicidal sous-chef. Gluten-free alternatives saved her sanity and her life.

Go gluten-free and your body might respond positively.