Hambleton Brewery: the first British gluten free beer, tested every batch
I spoke to Rachel Harrison of Hambleton Brewery in North Yorkshire, who brewed the first gluten free beer made in Britain and now brew their whole bottled and canned range gluten free, with every batch tested before it goes on sale.
By Simon · Updated 5 August 2026
I started Free From Beer after a coeliac diagnosis took beer off the table overnight. Part of that is getting to know the breweries making good gluten free beer. This week, Rachel Harrison of Hambleton Brewery in North Yorkshire, one of the oldest names in British gluten free beer.
Five from the range. Photo by Hambleton Brewery.
Every beer Hambleton put in a bottle or a can is gluten free. Someone comes into the shop and says they’re gluten free. “That’s great,” Rachel Harrison tells them. “You can have everything. You don’t have to go to a particular section.” And they can’t quite believe it.
The first one
Hambleton got there before almost anyone. Rachel’s father, Nick Stafford, started the brewery in 1991 at the bottom of his in-laws’ garden, with some old steel tanks and a rusty Peugeot 205. GFA, the Gluten Free Ale, arrived in 2005. It is generally recognised as the first gluten free beer brewed in Britain, and it won Best Gluten Free Beer in Europe at the 2015 World Beer Awards.
Nick and his wife sold beer at markets and fairs, where people kept asking if they had anything gluten free. “Dad is a fixer,” Rachel said. “If you’ve got a problem, he wants to fix it. So it was really just down to demand.”
The early versions were harder work than they would be today. This was before Brewers Clarex, the enzyme most gluten free brewers now reach for, so the first GFA was built from sorghum rather than barley. “It’s very difficult to use grains that don’t contain gluten,” Rachel said, “and it tastes a bit grim compared to now.”
Nick’s brother had a brewery before him. “He wasn’t put off that his brother was doing the same,” Rachel said. “It was more, I’ll do it better.”
Everything gluten free
For years the gluten free side was just GFA and the lager that followed it, GFL. Everything else Hambleton brewed was ordinary beer. Then Rachel started pushing.
“It was a lot of nagging production by me,” she said. “People want more gluten free beers. So they eventually gave in and said, okay, we’ll do everything.”
From 2022 the brewery was brewing the whole range gluten free. The labels took longer to catch up. Rachel wasn’t going to bin boxes of perfectly good packaging just to add two words, so for a while the beer was gluten free before the label said so. “I do remember saying to people, you can order it, but the label doesn’t say it is.” One by one they were reprinted, and Bootleggers IPA was the last to change over. “It was a nice day when everything was gluten free.”
A few from the range. Tap through for the full detail on each.
The rest of the range
GFA and GFL now sit inside a much bigger range: a blonde, an amber, two IPAs, a porter, a low alcohol beer, and seasonals for autumn and Christmas. Rachel is keen it isn’t all ales, that a coeliac gets the same choice of styles as anyone else.
A lot of that came from the canning line, which they bought just after COVID and nearly talked themselves out of. “We thought it was a terrible idea,” Rachel said. “Oh gosh, what are we going to do, we’ve got a canning machine?” The logic was hard to argue with. “It’d be a bit weird if the brewery didn’t have a range of cans, seeing as we can for other breweries.” It added five beers to the range, and more contract work with them.
What you won’t find is a stream of one-off specials or limited editions, and that’s deliberate. “I would rather have something that was decent all the time,” she said.
Tested every batch
Every batch of Hambleton beer is tested at an independent lab before it goes on sale.
“You can do it in-house,” Rachel said, “but it has that much more trustworthiness, that confidence for the drinker, that it is independent.”
Nobody makes them do this. “It isn’t actually law that you have to have every batch tested,” Rachel said, and the accreditation only asks for one test a year. She thinks that’s nowhere near enough. “You don’t know how much gluten is actually in your batch of malt. Every batch is going to be different. It scares us.”
Since 2022, when the whole range went gluten free, that has run to 40 to 50 tests a year.
Only one batch has ever failed a test, and that only recently. It was pulled, sealed off, and never sold.
One thing to be clear on. Hambleton’s beers are gluten reduced, brewed from barley and treated, not naturally gluten free beer made from grains that never held any gluten to begin with. If you’re coeliac, that difference is worth knowing, and we go through it in our guide to gluten free beer and ppm. Within that method, testing every batch is about as careful as it gets.
They also brew for other people
Hambleton brew and package for other breweries too, contract work and white labelling. That includes making a beer gluten free for a brewery that can’t do it itself.
“You could come to us and we can make that happen,” Rachel said. “We do white labelling as well, so you can even have our recipes, but your own label.” If you run a brewery and want to go gluten free without rebuilding your own process, that door is open.
A working brewery
Hambleton is a working brewery, not a visitor attraction, and Rachel is clear about the difference. Up the road are Black Sheep and Theakstons, all tours and tasting rooms. Hambleton just brews. “We’re not a show brewery,” she said, “just brewing it in the right way to make it tasty.”
What she cares about is choice, and not only her own. She likes that gluten free has opened more breweries up to coeliacs rather than fewer, and has no interest in being the only name on the shelf. “We don’t need everybody drinking Hambleton,” she said. “That would be quite a boring world.”
Where to buy it
The full range is on the Hambleton Brewery shop, in bottle and can. One thing for the pub: not every cask ale is gluten free yet, so ask before you order a pint of it.
My verdict
Hambleton have been at this longer than almost anyone in Britain, and they haven’t coasted on it. They took the whole bottled and canned range gluten free when nothing forced them to, and they test every batch when the rules ask for one a year. For a coeliac that means no reading the back of every can, and no settling for the one safe option on the shelf. Start with the GFA that started it, or the Bootleggers IPA that finished the set.
You can see every Hambleton beer we list, with the full detail on each, on the Hambleton Brewery page in our directory.
Frequently asked questions
Which Hambleton beers are gluten free?
The entire bottled and canned range. Hambleton brew everything gluten free now, from the original GFA and GFL to Stud Blonde, Bootleggers IPA, Thoroughbred IPA and Nightmare Porter. A coeliac can pick anything off the shelf rather than hunting for the one safe beer. Some cask ale is not yet gluten free, so check when you are buying draught in a pub.
Are Hambleton beers safe for coeliacs?
Hambleton beers are gluten reduced, not naturally gluten free. They are brewed from barley malt and treated to break the gluten down, then independently tested to below the UK legal threshold of 20 parts per million. What sets Hambleton apart is that they test every single batch rather than once a year, and hold back any batch that does not pass. It is still worth understanding the difference between gluten reduced and naturally gluten free first, which we cover in our guide to gluten free beer and ppm.
How does Hambleton test its gluten free beer?
Every batch, independently, using the ELISA test at an outside laboratory. A batch is only sold once it has passed. Since 2022, when the whole range went gluten free, that has run to 40 to 50 tests a year. The gluten free accreditation only asks breweries to test once a year, which Rachel Harrison finds too loose, because every delivery of malt carries a slightly different level of gluten. So Hambleton test batch by batch instead.
Was Hambleton the first gluten free beer in the UK?
Hambleton's GFA, launched in 2005, is generally recognised as the first gluten free beer brewed on British soil. Green's launched a year earlier in 2004, but is brewed in Belgium. So Hambleton hold the claim to the first gluten free beer brewed in Britain, and it is still in production twenty years on.
Where can I buy Hambleton gluten free beer?
Direct from the Hambleton Brewery online shop, which carries the full range in bottle and can. You can see every Hambleton beer we list, with the detail on each, on the Hambleton Brewery page in our directory.