Wyeast to offer Gluten Free Ale and Lager yeast

Wyeast is going to start offering gluten free yeast to homebrewers in July. The two products they will be offering are Wyeast 1272 GF American Ale II and Wyeast 2206 GF Bavarian Lager Yeast.
Read more on it here and here.

To clear up any confusion, the "gluten free yeast" tag is sort of a misnomer. Yeast doesn't have anything to do with gluten, barley and wheat do. The new product is a gluten free smack pack that doesn't use barley products to get the yeast going. The yeast strains are likely identical to their counterparts available in standard smack packs.

Yuri_Rage said:

To clear up any confusion, the "gluten free yeast" tag is sort of a misnomer. Yeast doesn't have anything to do with gluten, barley and wheat do. The new product is a gluten free smack pack that doesn't use barley products to get the yeast going. The yeast strains are likely identical to their counterparts available in standard smack packs.

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Mmmm....good observation!

Also the yeast is grown on Molasses not on Barley or Wheat.

Wyeast has to compete with the dry yeast manufactures, whose packs are already g-free

note that the first article is incorrect

Until recently, commercial or homebrewers who want to brew beer free of gluten had to propagate their own yeast in a gluten-free medium.

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WRONG, we just used dry yeast.

and the down sides of using gluten yeast?

z987k said:

and the down sides of using gluten yeast?

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Once again, it's not the yeast. It's the material used in the starter (smack pack) that has gluten (or doesn't in Wyeast's new gluten-free products). The down side to using a product containing gluten is that it will cause an allergic reaction in some people. If you've been drinking beer and eating bread all your life with no problems, you have no need for gluten free products.