Abbeydale Brewery: a whole range turned gluten free, every batch tested

I started Free From Beer after a coeliac diagnosis took beer off the table overnight. Part of that is talking to the breweries making good gluten free beer. This week I spoke to Laura Rangeley, marketing and communications manager and co-owner at Abbeydale Brewery in Sheffield, about a decision most breweries never make: turning the entire range gluten free.

The team outside Abbeydale Beerworks, the brewery's new taproom on Abbeydale Road.

The reaction that stays with Laura came within minutes. “When we announced we’d made Moonshine, our flagship pale ale, gluten free, within minutes someone called us to say they’d gone straight to the Rising Sun, our pub in Fulwood, to have a pint of it. They’d been missing it since their diagnosis, and were so excited to have it back in their life.”

A coeliac diagnosis does not just take beer away. It takes a specific pint away, the one you always had. Abbeydale gave that back, and not with some side project knocked up for the free from shelf. They did it with Moonshine, the beer the whole city drinks.

Thirty years, and a Sheffield institution

Abbeydale has been brewing since 1996, started by Pat and Sue Morton in a former steelworks off Abbeydale Road, the street that gives the brewery its name. This year is its thirtieth. In that time it has become one of the names Sheffield beer is built on, and Moonshine is the reason.

Moonshine was the first recipe Pat brewed. A 4.3% pale ale, light on bitterness, built around late hops for flavour, it landed when pale, hop forward American beer was only just reaching the UK, and it has barely left a Sheffield bar since. It won the city’s Steel City Beer Festival on its first outing in 1996 and was named Champion Beer of Yorkshire in 2012. For a long stretch it was reckoned the cask ale you were most likely to find pouring somewhere in Sheffield on any given night.

So when Abbeydale made Moonshine gluten free, this was not a brewery dabbling at the edges of the free from aisle. It was the city’s flagship, the house pint, opened up to people who had been quietly handed a lime and soda for years.

Why the whole range, not a beer or two

Most breweries that make gluten free beer stop at one or two. Abbeydale make every beer they brew gluten free, and have done since October 2024. The reason is partly about drinkers and partly about the brewery itself.

“It’s really important to us that our beer is as accessible as possible to as many people who’d like to drink it,” Laura said. “That was the primary reason.” But there was a practical side too. In the years before 2024 more and more of the range was already going gluten free, and the team had built solid processes around it. “We realised it was actually making it easier for our brewers, the enzyme being part of every process, rather than needing to check each time whether a beer was intended to be gluten free or not. So it just became something we do as a matter of course.”

Make one beer gluten free and you create a question that has to be answered brew by brew, beer by beer, bar by bar. Make all of them gluten free and the question is gone. Simpler for the team, easier to communicate, and a far bigger choice for anyone who needs it.

How they keep it safe

Abbeydale’s beers are brewed from barley, like any beer, then treated with a gluten reducing enzyme, currently DeHaze, that breaks the gluten proteins down. The label says exactly that, “brewed using a gluten reducing enzyme.” Laura is precise about what that does and does not change: “The enzyme has no impact on the flavour of the finished beer.”

The care is in the checking. “Every single batch we brew has the enzyme added, and we have paperwork to evidence that addition for each batch, signed by the brewer in control of the brew and witnessed by a second member of staff.” Every batch is then lateral flow tested before packaging, and samples go regularly to an outside UKAS accredited lab. The beers come in under the 20ppm gluten free threshold. It matters to her that this is not taken on trust. “We take our responsibility incredibly seriously. We want to ensure our customers have ready access to information they can trust.”

Every batch is checked in the brewery's own lab before it is packaged. Photo: Matthew Curtis.

Abbeydale are careful about one thing in particular: they don’t print the gluten free logo on their pump clips. The beer is gluten free in the cask or keg when it leaves the brewery, but a pint pulled in a pub passes through someone else’s lines and taps. “We can be 100% sure that the product in the cask or keg is gluten free at the point of packaging,” Laura said, “but it’s also up to the venue serving the beer to ensure that confidence carries through to what is poured into the glass.”

It is one of the reasons a genuinely good gluten free beer can be so hard to find. The risk sits at several levels, the brewing, the testing, the packaging and the pour, and at each one someone has to be willing to carry it. Understandably, a lot of people would rather not, so they say nothing, or they don’t bother making the beer at all. Abbeydale take on what they can stand behind, are plain about where it stops, and don’t oversell the rest.

For a coeliac that leaves a simple rule. On draught, have a quick word with the bar. From a can or bottle, it’s exactly what has been tested.

Moonshine and Black Mass. Tap the cans for the full detail on each.

From a 0.5% to a 6.66% black IPA

The gluten free choice at Abbeydale is not a token pale. It runs from Reverence, an alcohol free 0.5%, through the 3.8% Serenity and the 4.1% pales Deception and Heathen, on to Voyager IPA at 5.6%, Heresy Lager, and Black Mass, a 6.66% black IPA. A session pale, a lager, a full strength IPA, something dark and strong, and the one you reach for when you are not drinking. All gluten free, all held to the same standard. You can see Abbeydale’s full gluten free range, with the testing detail and where to buy on each beer.

Black Mass is Laura’s own favourite, and a SIBA national champion. “I love how bold it is, robust roasty malt driven notes overlaid with an assertive hop character. If anyone tries the line you can really taste the gluten has been removed, you can’t, this one’s a great example of just how much of a flavour punch a gluten free beer can pack.”

That breadth has landed hardest with the drinkers who had given up most. “The response has been overwhelmingly positive,” Laura said. “Especially fans of mixed fermentation beers and stouts. It can be harder to find those styles in gluten free form.” A coeliac who loves a big dark beer is used to being offered a lager, if anything. Abbeydale hand them a 6.66% black IPA that won its category outright.

A taproom, and crisps you can actually order

There is now a place to drink the lot. Abbeydale Beerworks, the brewery’s new taproom, opened recently on Abbeydale Road, just around the corner from where it all started, with between two and four casks and six kegs pouring at any time. Even the crisps behind the bar, REAL Crisps, are gluten free, so a coeliac can order a pint and a packet without the usual second guessing. The whole counter is safe, not just one tap on it.

Where to buy it

Abbeydale’s full range is on their online shop, with nationwide delivery and free postage on a case or more. In Sheffield you can drink it at Abbeydale Beerworks on Abbeydale Road, and at the Rising Sun in Fulwood, the pub where Moonshine once sent someone running for a pint.

Why it matters

One gluten free beer is a gesture. A whole range is a decision. It means a coeliac can pick up anything with the Abbeydale name on it and not turn the can over: the black IPA, the proper lager, the strong one, the safe 0.5%, the house pale the whole city already drinks. Tested every batch, with no logo printed that they can’t stand behind. A thirty year old Sheffield brewery worked out that its gluten free customers wanted the same beer as everyone else, not a smaller, quieter version of it. More should.