A brewery in Oregon has produced a beer that contains less than 10 parts-per-million gluten and tastes like the real thing because it is the real thing — the Craft Beer Alliance has found a way to remove the gluten from barley malt! This is really good news for people who live in Oregon where the product brewed. If you live elsewhere, you probably have never seen the product. If you have, the beer has been repackaged in such a way that there are no references to gluten or the lack thereof. WHY?

Here a two quotations that seem to explain  the situation: (Click on the first phrase of either statement to read the complete article.)

The FDA allows breweries to label these beers “gluten-free” if they contain fewer than 20 parts per million of gluten. Omission’s [the beverage in question] labels claim the beer contains 6 ppm or fewer of gluten. But to ship a barley-based beer out of state….the brewery needs label approval from the Tax and Trade Bureau. And the bureau does not currently allow any statement about gluten content on the labels of these beers, says specialist Tom Hogue, the agency’s director for congressional and public affairs”. The FDA allows breweries to label these beers “gluten-free” if they contain fewer than 20 parts per million of gluten. Omission’s [the beverage in question] labels claim the beer contains 6 ppm or fewer of gluten. But to ship a barley-based beer out of state… the brewery needs label approval from the Tax and Trade Bureau. And the bureau does not currently allow any statement about gluten content on the labels of these beers, says specialist Tom Hogue, the agency’s director for congressional and public affairs.”

The catch is, to market the beers across state lines, Widmer [the brewery that produced the beer] had to alter the original labels to eliminate the phrase “gluten-free.” Indeed, the label cannot make any statement about gluten at all. “We’ll be relying heavily on the social media to get the word out,” Although the Craft Brew Alliance claims every batch is laboratory-tested to guarantee it contains 6 ppm or less of gluten, the federal Tax and Trade Bureau — the agency that regulates barley-based beer — doesn’t officially recognize any test for determining the gluten content of a fermented beverage.

At this point I would refer you to several articles to help you make up your own mind about this situation. But, there are at least 3600 links related to this subject. I read the first four pages of google links and the only thing I can say with any kind of certainty is that everyone loves the beer and that everyone is upset with the bureaucrats who are making it difficult for us to enjoy it. Good luck to us all!