Gluten Free Beer and Alcohol
Unfortunately, giving up gluten also means most beers are off limits, as the beer brewing process usually involves gluten containing grains. But since necessity is the mother of all invention, gluten free beers (made from sorghum) have been slowly but surely expanding into the market and are no longer as difficult to find as they once were.
Some favorite brands include:
Bard’s Tale Beer – their Dragon’s Gold variety is particularly good.
New Grist Beer – made from sorghum and rice extract too.
*Use these websites to find the closest retailer to you or request your local grocery store to carry these if you will be buying often!
As for other alcohols, I had always believed that you had to stick with wine, tequila, or potato vodka to avoid gluten from the distilling processes involving wheat or rye in most other hard alcohols. However, the book “Celiac Disease: A Hidden Epidemic” by Dr. Peter Green, Director of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University, states this is a myth: “The distilling process eliminates the gliadin fragment from spirits made from wheat, rye, and barley (e.g., bourbon, vodka, scotch)”. Cheers to that!