Allergies

[holly]

Hello,

I am new to this group, I hope you can help me. I love beer! I have recently found out that I am allergic to wheat and wheat gluten. Do all beers contain this? I love Hefewiezen, which I am assuming has wheat being that it is a wheat beer. What sorts should I watch out for?

In addition, I went to Belgium a few years back and have been dreaming of their beers ever since. Do any of the breweries there, ship here? My favorite was West Malle. Anyone had that?

Sorry to ramble, just happy to have found this group!

Thanks,
Holly

[newportstorm]

Welcome to the group - lot's of good advice and discussion here - enjoy!

As for wheat, even breweries that claim they only use "Malt, hops, water and yeast" may in fact use a number of ingredients that they don't tell you about. Many are commonly used for head retention (which wheat helps with), clarity, etc. Until the govt. forces brewers to list every ingedient they use (which I'm sure some fear), you may never know exactly what's in your brew - unless you brew it yourself.

Many great Belgian beers and belgian-style brews are readily available in the US. Whether they are in your area or not is another story (there's always trading, but now I'm getting ahead of myself). Anyway, Westmalle is distributed by Merchant du Vin in the US, I believe. Find your nearest good beer shop and see if they carry it or deal with a Merchant du Vin rep. that can order you some.

Cheers!

[ray m]

Holly....welcome to the board. I am sorry for your condition. My wife has an uncle that has the same condition---so many special foods have to be prepared for him. He can't even eat Thanksgiving turkey which, in their living days, were fed wheat.

I wish I could name some beers for you that I could say for sure have NO wheat. Hefeweizens and other American wheat beers definitely do. You're probably safe with stouts. I think a lot of English breweries employ some wheat for body, etc. This post was probably of no use to you---hope it helped a little:(

[quantum24]

Allergies really are a pain. i think what others have said about wheat is pretty much right on. as far as belgians, there are many great belgians available in the US, and an even greater number of belgian style beers. what part of the country are you located, knowing this will make it easier for people to list belgians that are available in that area. if you are in the northeast check out allagash and brewery ommegang, victory makes a triple that is decent although the allagash triple is far superior. hope this helps

[kengeorge]

Hi Holly,
Very interested to see your post. My girlfriend was diagnosed last week with having a thing called Coeliac Disease. This is basically an allergy to the GLUTEN protein in wheat, rye, and a couple of other similar grains. (Nobody mentioned HOPS).
As we are both very fond of a cool drop of the amber liquid on a hot summers day (or a headier dark one on a winters night) it's a total bummer that BEER seems to now be one of the big no-no's !!!
I can't seem to get much clarity from talking to dieticians etc so HELP- anybody out there with any helpful knowledge on this please...
Thanks.

[steveh]

Here's a web site recommended by a local radio personality who also has Coeliac Disease. From everything I've heard, hops aren't a contributor to the allergy, only grains with gluten.

http://www.livingwithout.com/

S.

[kengeorge]

Fellow beer drinkers..
Since posting my last message we found a dietician who knew a bit more about this whole situation: for coeliac allergy people the potential problem with beer is the GLUTEN residue that MAY still be present in the finished beer as part of the process where barley is fermented to provide the MALT base from which beers are brewed.
Apparently the lighter clearer beers have less or none of this residue whereas the heavier STOUT type beers have more; so for coeliacs it's generally safe to assume that any of the lighter lagers and ales are permissible but to limit or avoid the darker more dense brews.
So there you have it...
Incidently the term coeliac DISEASE is an archaic term; coeliacs have an allergy reaction to certain naturally occuring chemicals; in their case gluten.
It's no more a disease than say excema or hay fever is...funny you never hear anybody saving they suffer from hay fever disease..
Thanks.
Ken George.

[steveh]

Originally posted by kengeorge
Fellow beer drinkers..
Since posting my last message we found a dietician who knew a bit more about this whole situation: for coeliac allergy people the potential problem with beer is the GLUTEN residue that MAY still be present in the finished beer as part of the process where barley is fermented to provide the MALT base from which beers are brewed.

Barley (and wheat) isn't fermented to make malt, it's partly germinated. The seed kernel is allowed to begin to sprout, then stopped through drying - this is malting.

The dryed, malted grain is then kilned to certain extents to create different "colored" beers with varying flavors. It's these malts that are then mashed (cooked) to convert their starches to fermentable sugars. Residual gluten in the grains used is probably carried over from the mash to the boil to the ferment - and thusly, to the final product.

Stouts and Porters get their dark colors from barley that isn't malted, but roasted to a dark color. Does high roasting diminish the amount of gluten in a grain? I don't know, but the barley used for color in this case provides no fermentable sugars and the styles still need malted barley as a base to create the beer.

Point being - I don't think you can separate lighter colored and bodied beers from darker colored and bodied beers to get away from the gluten.

Now - a question to ask; is gluten present in corn or rice? The big 3 breweries in the U.S. tend to use more of these grains than barley in their (lighter colored and bodied) beers. Their beers are also highly filtered before packaging, and this could also help to cut back the glutens and other residual proteins in the beer.

Sounds like the bottom line on beer for folks with Coeliac may be to stay away from real beer - that is, beer that is made strictly from barley or wheat, and not highly processed through filtering. It's a shame for them to be deprived of the full experience of a good, flavorful beer.

S.

[jercs02]

I don't know what the situation is, but good luck

[blackhook]

Celiac disease (a.k.a., gluten intolerance) is NOT an allergy.

It is an autoimmune condition, in which even a tiny amount of gluten causes the immune system to attack the intestines.

Gluten is a long-chained protein present in wheat, rye &, alas, barley...and even though beer fermentation breaks apart the longest protein chains, those that remain have been shown to be harmful to celiacs. Conversely, distillation completely breaks down the gluten chains, so scotch whiskey & almost all other alcohol is O.K. for celiacs.

Celiac disease is strongly hereditary. I was diagnosed about a year ago, after my Mom & brother. It is also a "tip of the iceberg" condition, as only about 60,000 Americans have been diagnosed, and recent large-scale research predicts around 2 millioon people in the U.S. are affected.

As many as half of all celiacs have no symptoms, and many others have digestive problems. Chronic fatigue is the single most pervasive symptom. Since going on a total gluten-free diet, I feel a lot stronger & my fatigue is basically gone.

I'm hopeful that a "mitigation pill" will be available in 5-10 years. Several research groups are making a lot of progress toward that goal.

As a total beer fanatic, this condition sucks, I've been to the Oregon Brewer's Festival in Portland for the last 11 years...it is truly awesome. And here in Seattle we have an amazing variety of fresh local beers. I really miss my hoppy IPAs!!

But ultimately gluten intolerance is just a challenge to deal with & move on. There's still a lot of great stuff to enjoy here in the Great Pacific Northwest.

BTW, for anyone interested in more info, here's a link to an excellent story in today's Seattle P-I newspaper...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/food/169871_glutenfree21.html

[BluesHarp]

This may be way off-base, but does cold filtering help to coagulate the gluten and remove it? If so, can this be done with homebrews?