Is Sol gluten free?

Sol is not gluten free, and as a coeliac who would happily drink a cold Mexican lager in the sun, I wish that were not the case. It is brewed with malted barley, the same gluten-containing grain behind most lagers, and it goes through no process to take that gluten back out. Coeliac UK is blunt on this point: beers, lagers, stouts and ales made from barley are not suitable for a gluten free diet. Sol is a textbook example.

What the testing found

You do not have to take the ingredient list on trust. A food allergy blogger ran Sol through EZ Gluten test strips in August 2022, retested in October, and both came back positive, with an estimated 20 to 40ppm of gluten. That sits at or above the 20ppm ceiling a product has to stay under to carry a gluten free label in the UK. An older 2009 study had put Sol below the detection limit, but the more sensitive modern test contradicted it. Celiac.com lists Sol plainly among the Mexican beers that are not gluten free.

So the label and the lab agree. Barley in, gluten out, no step in between to change that.

Is Sol gluten reduced?

No, and this is where people get caught out. A gluten reduced beer still starts with barley, but the brewer adds an enzyme during fermentation that breaks the gluten protein down, usually below the 20ppm legal limit. Those beers can be labelled gluten free, though a barley-based one still has to state contains barley on the can.

Sol does none of that. It has never been enzyme-treated and has never been marketed as gluten reduced. The confusion comes from drinkers hearing that some barley beers can be made safe and assuming Sol might be one of them. It is not. It is an ordinary barley lager with the gluten fully intact, which is why it tests where it does.

Coeliac disease or gluten sensitivity

The 20ppm threshold is a regulatory line, not a promise of zero risk. For coeliac disease, an autoimmune condition, even small amounts of gluten can trigger a reaction, and some coeliacs cannot tolerate beers that test well under 10ppm. At 20 to 40ppm, Sol is a clear no.

Non-coeliac gluten sensitivity is different, and tolerance varies a lot from person to person. Some people with sensitivity get away with low-gluten beers. Sol is not low-gluten though. It is a full barley lager with measurable gluten and no gluten free claim, so even moderate sensitivity may well react to it.

What to drink instead

If you want that clean, cold lager hit without the gluten, there are properly tested options in our directory:

• Daura Damm, 5.4%. A Spanish lager made from barley then enzyme-treated, certified by CSIC batch by batch and coming in under 3ppm. The strongest evidence trail of any beer we cover.
• Green’s Dry Hopped Lager, 4.1%. Naturally gluten free, brewed from sorghum, millet, buckwheat and brown rice rather than barley, so there is no gluten in it to begin with. Tested at 0ppm.
• Bellfield Bohemian Pilsner, 4.5%. A Czech-style pilsner with Saaz hops, gluten removed by enzyme treatment and certified below 20ppm.

For the full picture, see our guide to gluten free lager, or browse the whole beer directory.