Wheat / gluten free?

Alright so here's my second question... I got my girlfriend to appreciate good beer soon after we started dating...soon after that she was diagnosed with Celiac disease The short explanation is that people with that are allergic to gluten, the protein found in wheat, barley and some other grains.

Since most extracts seem to contain things that contain gluten I was thinking about doing full grain mash, but in reading up on this it sounds like malted barley contains the proteins needed to break down the starches in whatever other grains you might add to your recipe. (Oats, rice, corn, buckwheat to name a few)

Will I still get decent starch breakdown to go onto fermentation if I don't use the malt or extracts?



Mike

oh in case you were wondering... we've only found 3 gluten free beers, Redbridge, New Grist (boooo), and Bard's Tale

 

Craft Brewer Radio has some great info on gluten free brewing. You have to go pretty far back in the archives. Late 2006- early 2007 I think.

 

so should be able to find sorghum extract at your LHBS or online....
Just use that as your base... I wonder what you use to color it... I'm not an expert of gluten-free recipe.

 

There are a number of GF discussions and recipes. You can't use barley, it also contains gluten. Most people use sorghum extract as a base and toast/roast grains like millet or oats for dark grains. Sorghum tends to leave a sweet finish to the beer.

You might look into using concentrated alpha amylase in the mash.

 

snip

 

Alpha amylase converts starches to sugars.

If you are looking for something that tastes like malted barley, you won't find it. Malted millet is better than sorghum, but hard to find.