To be honest, I’ve forgotten the taste of traditional (wheat/barley) American beer. Before my diagnosis in1999, I’d been living and working in Germany for 22 years and washing down many of my meals with beers that were originally developed by Monks as a religious ritual. That, of course, is a side note. Let’s get down to business. Here is all you really need to know to enjoy gluten free beer.

First of all, we need to keep in mind the distinction between “wheat free” and “gluten free”. Wheat free beer is relatively easy to find. Barley is the ingredient that causes problems. Click here for an article giving more details on this issue.

Fortunately, beer can be brewed from sorghum as well as from barley. Anheuser-Busch has come to our rescue by producing Redbridge beer and marketing it nationally.

New Grist beer is brewed from sorghum and rice and is available at Whole Foods. I’m sure it is available elsewhere, but I could not find a list of locations. If you have this information, please help us out by leaving a comment at the bottom of this post or e-mailing me at gfceliac@gmail.com.

Bard’s Tale beer as another gluten free alternative. Click here to find a map showing restaurants that serve this brew.

Check out this article on “Cooking with Gluten Free Beer“. I’ve never actually tried it, but I assume that any recipe involving cooking with beer could work with gluten free beer . If you have any first-hand evidence to support or deny that statement, please leave a comment at the end of this article or e-mail me at gfceliac@gmail.com.

The Deschutes Brewery, with pubs in Portland and Bend, Oregon, serves delicious gluten free beer. I know about this place from personal experience — I live near Portland and have enjoyed that wonderfully tasty personal experience many times. I did not find the link until I needed it to complete this article.

There are, I hope, thousands of places like my favorite watering hole, the Deschutes Brewery. I rely on your comments and e-mails to gfceliac@gmail.com to help us locate them.