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Brewery & Distillery
Craft Brewery
gases that rise to the top, while the heavier, less ten-free beverages isn’t your only option. Provided
volatile compounds, including gluten, sink to the you follow best practices for preventing cross-con-
bottom. Once the alcohol is re-condensed and col- tamination, there is no reason you can’t produce
lected, the resulting product becomes protein- and gluten-free products in a non-dedicated facility.
gluten-free. You will need to take extra precautions by cleaning
and testing any shared equipment, and some cer-
The Benefits of Third-Party Certification tifications, like GFCO, recommend using dedicated
gluten-free equipment on production lines, simply
The safest bet for gluten-free consumers is to because the equipment used to distill alcohol can
look for products that are labeled or certified as be difficult to take apart and clean thoroughly. On
gluten-free. The benefits of certifying alcoholic the other hand, if you’re doing small batch pro-
beverages as gluten-free are many. According to duction and you can get inside your equipment to
FMI U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends, 29% of all shop- clean and swab it, you can use shared equipment.
pers look for certification claims on packaging for You just need to verify that you’ve removed all
food and beverages—and this is particularly true traces of gluten before you make your next glu-
for gluten-free consumers. These consumers look ten-free batch.
for brands that inspire confidence, which means
that in addition to labeling products gluten-free, As far as cleaning solutions go, you don’t need
taking the step to get third-party certification, like to spend top dollar on any specialty products.
that of the Gluten Intolerance Group’s Gluten-Free Standard soap and water will do. The important
Certification Organization (GFCO), goes a long way part of the process is swabbing to test for the
in building brand loyalty among the gluten-free presence of gluten or protein once you’ve cleaned
community. your equipment. To demonstrate the effectiveness
of your distillation process at removing proteins,
For one leading producer of vodka, obtaining GFCO recommends performing a lab procedure
GFCO certification and prominently displaying the called an “amino acid analysis” that uses mass
certification logo on a paper sleeve attached to spectrometry to measure the amount of residual
their bottles has made their product the vodka of amino acids in distillates. A commercial lab can
choice for gluten-free consumers, who are very assist with the testing process, particularly for
brand loyal. For manufacturers, certifying alcoholic smaller distilleries that don’t have the equipment

Image Credit: Allied Boilers beverages can be a real differentiator and selling to conduct independent testing.
point in a booming market.
Things to Look Out for When Producing
Best Practices for Producing Gluten-Free Alcohol
Gluten-Free Beer and Spirits
If you are not making a distilled product—if you
Producers of craft beers and spirits can capital- are, say, brewing beer—you should start with high-
ize on demand for gluten-free products, but it’s er quality grains and do a visual inspection once
important for companies to follow the correct pro- they enter your facility to ensure they really are
cedures for manufacturing these beverages. The gluten-free. You should also beware of advertising
process of producing gluten-free alcoholic beverag- “gluten-removed” beer to gluten-free consumers.
es starts with sourcing gluten-free ingredients for Gluten-removed beer is manufactured using wheat,
products that are fermented but not distilled and rye, barley or some other common gluten grain,
ensuring that all gluten has been removed from and then, after fermentation, is typically treated
products that are distilled. Manufacturers should enzymatically in a way that makes the product
also make sure their facilities are set up to avoid test negative for gluten. However, because testing
cross-contamination. One option is to produce alco- does not reliably detect the presence of all residual
hol in a dedicated gluten-free facility. While only 15 proteins that people with celiac disease react to,
of the 8,000 breweries in the US are dedicated glu- the TTB has ruled that only beer that starts with
ten-free facilities, this number has grown from just gluten-free grains can be labeled as gluten-free.
around three in 2016. If you want to produce a gluten-free product,
another option is hard seltzer. Although many of
However, using a dedicated facility to produce glu- these products start with malt, which is most com-

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