Gluten Free Home Brewing Blog

Choosing the Best Dry Yeast for Brewing Gluten-Free Beer

First things first: if you are brewing gluten-free beer, you will need to use dry yeast. Most liquid brewing yeasts are propagated using media derived from barley and are therefore not considered gluten-free. Dry yeast, on the other hand, is typically cultivated using sugar-based media such as beet sugar, cane sugar, or molasses, making it the preferred choice for gluten-free brewing. If you choose to make a yeast starter, be sure all ingredients used are gluten-free as well.¹

While dry yeast o...

The Complete Gluten-Free Beer Malt Chart

Selecting the right malt is one of the most important decisions a brewer makes when designing a recipe. Malt contributes fermentable sugars, color, body, mouthfeel, head retention, and many of the flavors that define a finished beer. While barley brewers have long relied on established malt charts and style guidelines, equivalent resources for gluten-free brewing have been far more limited.

Today, gluten-free brewers have access to an expanding range of specialty malts made from millet, rice, b...

How Can Darker Be Lighter

Every so often, we hear from a customer who thinks the malt they received was mislabeled. This often happens when ordering Dark and Gas Hog rice malts, or Gas Hog and Pitch rice malts together. It can also happen with various Caramel millet malts, or even with buckwheat malt.

Most people think of kilning and roasting malt as a way to deepen color—but push the heat too far or too long, and the opposite can happen. After consulting multiple sources, including AI, I could not find any studies spec...

The Use of Exogenous Enzymes and Mash Regime in Brewing Gluten Free Beer

Unlock the full potential of your brewing process with Termamyl SC DS, Ondea Pro, and Ceremix Flex, and learn how to maximize starch conversion using falling and rising step mash techniques. Whether you’re a home brewer or running a gluten-free brewing operation, understanding how to use these specialized enzymes can elevate your beer’s flavor, body, and clarity while optimizing sugar extraction for fermentation.

Termamyl SC DS: Advanced Alpha-Amylase for Brewing

Termamyl SC DS is a high-pe...

Low & Non-Alcohol via Cold Extraction

Each year around this time, I receive emails, phone calls and text messages asking about brewing low alcohol and/or no alcohol beer. For many years I referred folks to an article from Brew Your Own Magazine titled 'Brew a Great Non-Alcoholic Beer'. This article was removed (or relocated) from their website at an unknown time. But essentially, it covered the process of removing alcohol post fermentation by cooking off the alcohol from the beer, like cooking off the alcohol when using wine while c...

Should You Adjust Your Mash pH

The short answer is that most home brewers probably don't. So why does this come up? pH entered the conversation when GFHBers began discovering and experimenting with new exogenous enzymes. Specifically, Ceremix Flex and Ondea Pro. Since neither of these enzymes were specifically designed with brewing gluten free beer in mind, it took a lot of R&D over a long period of time to develop best practices. Originally, many brewers went through the extra step to maintain the 4.2 to 4.8 pH range recomme...

Grouse Malt House Collaboration Series

Grouse Malt House and Gluten Free Home Brewing have partnered to bring you a new collaborative series. Head over to grousemalthouse.com/news/ to see each month’s post, as well as some other articles Grouse has done over the years!

2024

May The 4th Be With You

We are celebrating the 27th Annual Big Brew AKA May The 4th (be with you) with this new Grouse recipe developed exclusively for GFHB. Now, go brew and enjoy The Phantom Pilsner.

February - Amber Ale Recipe

Grouse shares a craft Amber A...

How Ondea Pro Works: Some Preliminary Thoughts

Shared with permission by Otherwise Brewing

Ondea Pro is a pretty exciting development for gluten-free brewing, and over at Otherwise Brewing, we’ve been experimenting with it a lot. As such, I wanted to add some insights to complement the excellent primer that Jason Yerger and JP Bierly put together in January.

We’ve seen some results that match up with what Jason and JP have found, but we’ve also seen a few differences. I’ve also conducted a number of controlled mini-mash experiments to try ...

Introduction To Ondea Pro Liquid Enzyme Complex

By Jason Yerger, owner and head brewer at Mutantis Brewery & Bottle Shop; and JP Bierly, owner and head brewer at Bierly Brewing Company

There's a new enzyme in town, and it's a real game-changer for the gluten-free homebrewing community!  As many of you intrepid homebrewers probably know by now, even when gluten-free grains are malted, they don't develop the same amount of enzymes that are found in malted barley, and they can't usually be mashed successfully without enzyme supplementation.  Ho...

Increase Efficiency By Improving Your Grist

This year has been one of growth and expansion at Bierly Brewing, a dedicated gluten free brewery in McMinnville, Oregon, and we’ve been very focused on bringing in new equipment that will help us meet our production goals with quality and efficiency. We brew all of our beer two barrels at a time, but until recently our grain bills were limited to 42 pounds or less. At this scale, we were able to get by with a corona-style mill to grind all of our grain. We used a Wondermill Jr. and it came with...

Assessment of Flaked Quinoa PPG & Lovibond

High Gravity Gluten Free Brewing

While the early advances in brewing gluten free beer can be chronicled on the GFHB facebook page, much of what is rapidly evolving can be found here on the GFHB blog! It seems like every few months we are updating our brewing recommendations with the latest and greatest information. And although the gluten free brewing community has seemingly advanced more in the last couple of years than it did in the last decade, there hasn't been much information about brewing high gravity beers.

Matt S. fro...

Catching Up with Andrew Lavery

This is a blog collaboration with the Zero Tolerance Gluten-Free Home Brew Club of Portland Oregon. Thank you Joe Morris from Zero Tolerance for reaching out to the worldwide gluten free brewing community and coming up with the great questions in this epic blog!

Most GFHBers have read Andrew Lavery’s 2006 Gluten Free Brewing and Gluten Free Malting tutorials. These tutorials have been referenced heavily for years where they are the starting point for many gluten-free brewers. Andrew has graciousl

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Assessment of Water Absorption Across Various Gluten-Free Grains

Introduction:

This research was carried out by Ben Barnes, undergraduate senior chemistry student at Southern Oregon University, on behalf of Gluten Free Home Brewing. The purpose of this research is to determine volume of water absorbed by various gluten-free grains during the Single Infusion Mash procedure (link included at end of report).

Experimental procedure:

A water bath with an initial temperature of 71.1 °C (160 °F) was prepared. In this experiment, there were eight total samples: t...

BIABing with Anthony from Texas

For the past several months, we have been collaborating with Anthony from Texas to develop a gluten-free clone of his favorite pre-gluten-free beer. After a couple revisions he thinks we may be close to the big unveiling. During this time, we have also worked on refining our BIAB brewing recommendations. You may recall past blogs when we conducted a series of BIAB batches and posted our results. We had inconsistent results, but they seemed to all suggest that due to the very thin mash conditions...

Sugar Chart For Gluten Free Home Brewing

Sugars play an important role in gluten-free brewing, whether they are used to increase gravity, lighten body, improve fermentability, or create specific flavor characteristics. From simple sugars such as dextrose and sucrose to specialty ingredients like candi syrup, honey, and molasses, each fermentable contributes differently to the finished beer.

The chart below provides a quick reference for some of the most commonly used sugars in gluten-free brewing, including their approximate yield, co...

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2026

March

This newsletter explores the essential role of yeast nutrients and roasted malts in gluten-free brewing. Learn when and how to use Fermaid O, Fermaid K, and Go-Ferm Protect™ for optimal fermentation performance. We also highlight our full range of roasted malts—from Light Roasted Millet for blonde ales to Dark Roasted Vienna for i...