Are long-aged sour beers GF? anyone here tried one?

[sweetcell]

hello, gluten-free'ers,

in the sour beer thread, i asked the following:

question: is gluten broken down by the bugs, over time, in sour beers?

sours have very few proteins in them (witness the poor head retention of sours). gluten is a protein. ergo, there should be little to no gluten left in a long-aged sour beer?

hypothesis: between ClarityFerm and the breakdown of proteins by the bugs, long-aged sours are gluten-free.

i am completely new to the world of GF so please excuse me if this line of thinking is stupid. i probably should have written "gluten-reduced" instead of "gluten-free," above.

per @igliashon excellent post,

So, for starters, let me say that "gluten intolerance" is a tremendous and unfortunate misnomer, as the intact gluten and gluten-like proteins are NOT the culprit in any known pathology included under this umbrella term. Rather, the culprit is prolamine molecules like gliadin, hordein, secalin, and occasionally avenin, and in the case of celiac disease, specific peptide sequences found in those molecules.
(...)
Celiac disease is the best-known and most-studied. While it is commonly stated that celiac disease is caused by a reaction to gluten and gluten-like compounds called prolamines, it is ultimately caused by a handful of peptides within those proteins. (...) In other words, it's not the whole gluten molecule that is the problem, it's a small component of it.

so, who knows if breaking down gluten is enough to neutralize those small components...

all that to ask: has anyone diagnosed with Celiac, or another form of gluten-related intolerance, tried a long-aged sour? (examples: cantillon, jolly pumpkin, rodenbach, russian river sours, drie fontainen, etc.)

 

[Legume]

I suspect that they could be lower in gluten than non long-aged sour beers, but they are probably still not truly safe for celiacs. I dont drink clarityferm treated beers for the same reason.

 

[xwass]

I do not have an answer for this but some information on Sourdough bread that may relate to this in certain ways.

There has been some research done about Sourdough breads being tolerable for those who are diagnosed with Celiac. Many of the same "bugs" in a sourdough starter which break down gluten can be present in sour beers also, so there could be a relationship there. I am not a scientist nor have I tested the protein levels of beers, but just "food for thought" if anyone wants to pursue the idea further.

A few articles on this:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20951830
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110119120406.htm

From my own experience I was able to tolerate breads baked in Spain, Germany and France much more than those in the US. (where I live). I think the way they ferment and bake bread is more agreeable with my gut at least. Because of this I have been doing a lot of research on the subject which led me to the information above.

I miss drinking beer and brewing much more than bread. I am hoping to find some methods for brewing and styles of beer that are more tolerable to drink so I am not limited to only GF specific beers. Going to try Clarity Ferm in my next batch and see how that goes. If I can't drink will give out as gifts at least!

Maybe someone more motivated and scientific than me will measure gluten levels in commercially available Sours, I know there are some websites out there that publish gluten levels in beer.