Is Coors gluten free?

Coors Light is a barley beer, and that settles the question for anyone with coeliac disease. It is brewed with barley malt, gluten lives in the barley protein, and Coors Light goes through no step to take that gluten out. It was the kind of cold, undemanding lager I would once have ordered without a second thought, which is part of why the answer is a flat no. In the UK the only Coors product on sale is Coors Light, and it is not gluten free.

What is actually in the can

Coors Light is built on malted barley, the same as most mainstream lagers. The brand sells it on being cold and crisp rather than on its ingredients, but the grain bill is no secret: barley malt, with the gluten that comes with it. There is no gluten free certification, and Molson Coors makes no gluten free claim for it anywhere on the UK site.

This is different from a gluten reduced beer, where a brewer starts with barley and then uses an enzyme to break the gluten protein down below the legal limit. Coors Light skips that process. The gluten stays where it is.

The 20 ppm question

Here is where the confusion starts. In the UK a beer can only be labelled gluten free if it contains 20 parts per million of gluten or less, and a handful of old independent tests have put Coors Light under that figure. A 2014 US test recorded it below 5 ppm. So people reasonably ask whether that makes it safe.

Two problems. First, Molson Coors does not certify Coors Light as gluten free, so there is no per batch testing behind that number and no guarantee the next can matches the last. Second, the standard test used for these readings, the R5 ELISA, is known to miss gluten fragments that fermentation has broken into smaller pieces. The National Celiac Association puts it plainly: there is no reliable way to measure gluten in a fermented drink, so a low reading on a barley beer cannot be read as a clean bill of health. A number under 20 on an uncertified beer is not the same as a beer brewed to be safe.

Coors Peak, the certified beer that no longer exists

If you have searched “Coors Peak gluten free”, you have found a real product that is also a dead end. Coors Peak Copper Lager was Molson Coors’ certified gluten free beer, brewed with brown rice instead of barley and certified by the Gluten Intolerance Group. It launched in the United States in 2015, gained a golden lager sibling in 2016, and was then discontinued. It is no longer made.

It was also never a UK beer. The “Coors Peak of Technology” line on the UK Coors website is marketing for the thermochromic ink that turns the can blue when the beer is cold. It is not a gluten free product, and it never was one over here. Molson Coors currently sells no certified gluten free beer in the UK at all.

So is Coors safe for coeliacs?

No. The evidence points one way. Coors Light is brewed from barley malt with no gluten removal. Coeliac UK is clear that ordinary beers and lagers are not suitable for a gluten free diet. And the brand itself makes no gluten free claim and offers no certified alternative. There is no version of Coors you can pick up in a UK shop or pub that is safe for someone with coeliac disease.

What to drink instead

The good news is that the lager you actually want, cold and clean and easy, is well covered by beers that are tested below the legal threshold rather than left to chance. A few from our directory worth knowing:

• Daura Damm Daura Lager, 5.4%. A full strength Spanish lager and the most rigorously tested option we cover. It is batch tested and comes in below 3 ppm.
• Bellfield Ace Lager, 3.2%. If it was the lightness of Coors Light you liked, this Edinburgh table lager is the closest swap: low in alcohol, clean, certified below 20 ppm.
• Celia Organic Lager, 4.5%. A crisp Czech style lager put through a de-glutenisation process and independently tested below 3 ppm.

All three are gluten reduced rather than naturally gluten free, so they still carry a contains barley line on the label. They are tested far below the level Coors Light is held to, which is the whole point of switching. For more in this style, see our guide to gluten free lager or browse the full beer directory.