Gluten Free Specialty Yeasts

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finley

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I am wanting to attempt to make some Gluten free beer for my wife, who is having issues with Gluten. She loves Belgian beers, however I can't seem to find any belgian yeast strains that are Gluten free. Is there a way to get a yeast strain like this, or make starters, wash, and reuse until it is essentially Gluten free?

I was thinking about making a 1 gallon starter with Sorghum or Rice Syrup, washing the yeast, and doing it again, with a 2 gallon "starter". Would this work?
 
I'm pretty dang sure yeast is naturally gluten free. I think it would be non-gluten-free if you used washed yeast from a regular barley-based brew. Otherwise yeast are propagated in pristine, sterile labs and packaged thusly so as not to have any contamination.

The symptoms of yeast allergies and gluten allergies are very similar so that's why they are often confused.
 
I was under the assumption that all of the liquid yeasts have gluten in them? I know dry yeasts are fine, but the selection is limited with them. Is this incorrect?
 
Liquid yeasts are grown in a barley-based wort, so the liquid yeasts in package contain some gluten.

For dry yeast, I've had good luck with T-58. That would be my default go-to yeast for a Belgian style beer.

If I found a beer style I simply couldn't satisfactorily reproduce with dry yeast, you could make a GF starter using a small amount of liquid yeast. There's info about it in the gluten-free ingredients sticky here/.
 
Liquid yeasts are grown in a barley-based wort, so the liquid yeasts in package contain some gluten.

For dry yeast, I've had good luck with T-58. That would be my default go-to yeast for a Belgian style beer.

If I found a beer style I simply couldn't satisfactorily reproduce with dry yeast, you could make a GF starter using a small amount of liquid yeast. There's info about it in the gluten-free ingredients sticky here/.

Cool, thanks for the edumicashun :D

But I guess it would make sense if labs propagate in barley-based solution seeing as they want the yeast acclimatized to the environment they are going to be thrust into.
 
Theoretically yes, you can do dilutions to reduce the amount of gluten:

Lets say a vial of liquid yeast contains 50ml and has a gluten concentration (from the wort it was grown in) of 12ppm. (1 miligram per liter of water/wort there's some fuzzy bits here that I'm leaving out ).

So a 50ml vial at a concentration of 12ppm would be normally diluted in a 5 gallon amount of gluten free wort, giving an ordinary dilution of: 12ppm * 50ml= Z * 18927ml. Z becomes .03 ppm of gluten in a 5 gallon batch.

White Lab's faq says that it's a 12ppm concentration of gluten in their vials, and is said to give 2ppm of gluten. I think someone mentioned how they got that, but I couldn't find where.

So yes, further reductions will reduce the gluten concentration.
Starters:
12ppm * 50ml = ? * 900ml (half gallon) = .66ppm
(dump the beer, keep 50ml of yeast) then .66ppm * 50ml = ? * 18927 = .001ppm for a 5 gallon batch. And so on.

You could also just use distilled water to do the same thing (yeast washing). Edit: Found the link https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f164/how-make-any-yeast-gluten-free-170919/
 
Liquid yeasts are grown in a barley-based wort, so the liquid yeasts in package contain some gluten.

For dry yeast, I've had good luck with T-58. That would be my default go-to yeast for a Belgian style beer.

If I found a beer style I simply couldn't satisfactorily reproduce with dry yeast, you could make a GF starter using a small amount of liquid yeast. There's info about it in the gluten-free ingredients sticky here/.


I've made up a brew based on DKershner's recipe using the S-33 Yeast (Another belgian strain) and it was really good.

He had the recipe on his webpage. Here it is http://brew.dkershner.com/2009/gluten-free-tripel-blonde/
 
look up how to make potato dextrose agar.... make that and make small plates of it using mason jars. take your glutionous yeast and dip a stick in it, then swap the PDA plate. let it sit a few days. use a sterile scraper and capture the colonies growing on the PDA and put it in some pre prepared wort and cap with an air lock. gluten free speciality yeast. not that hard. WE'RE GLUTEN FREE BREWERS WE'RE USED TO EXTRA STEPS
 
I'm going to say that what you choose should really depend on the state of your yeast.

Personally, I think that making cultures is great, and allows you to store extra yeast, something I'd do more with planning ahead.

I think using gluten free wort to dilute is a pretty bad idea, unless you've got some questionable older yeast (mine had a due date of a year ago, so I thought I'd just see if it was alive. It seems to be.)

I'd go with yeast washing straight from a vial if you plan on brewing in a day or two and that the gluten-yeast is relatively new. (Perhaps in addition to slanting so you have it onhand for a longer period of time.) Unless we get a good drying process down.

I'm still trying to decide when I think I should drain the wort and do a yeast wash so I can toss the dead ones before getting a starter up.
 
Thanks for the tips, I never realized that there were any dry Belgian style yeasts. My LHBS is very limited in stock. I just call out there any more to make certain they are open, and have something, because they occassionally decide they don't feel like working some days, and never open the shop.
 
Thanks for the tips, I never realized that there were any dry Belgian style yeasts. My LHBS is very limited in stock. I just call out there any more to make certain they are open, and have something, because they occassionally decide they don't feel like working some days, and never open the shop.

That doesn't surprise me at all.

I'm guessing you're in the US? There seems to be lots of great home brewing stores over there that can ship quickly.

Some times local isn't always the best option.
 
It's a shame. I always like to support local buisness. But with our plight sometimes the Internet is the only option. In that case click around, stock up and try to find the cheapest site with free shipping. Some people say they are frugal, me Im just cheap.
 
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