Gluten free beer at Waitrose: the best supermarket range in Britain, and what to actually buy

If you drink gluten free beer and you shop at a supermarket, Waitrose is the one. It has the broadest range in Britain as of June 2026: 17 lines from 13 brands, with a craft lean that no other major supermarket comes close to matching. Gipsy Hill Bandit, Tempest Modern Helles, Vocation Heart and Soul, Wold Top Against the Grain, and an exclusive low-calorie range called Prime Time. That is not a shelf assembled by a buying team looking to fill a free from slot. It is a range that suggests someone at Waitrose actually thought about it.

That is the good news. Here is the honest part: it costs more than Tesco, most of the range is still gluten removed from barley rather than naturally gluten free, and it remains thin on darker styles. There is no gluten free stout here. No porter. But as a starting point for supermarket gluten free beer, nothing else compares.

What Waitrose actually stocks

This is the full range as we found it in June 2026. Prices are approximate where confirmed and marked as unverified where they could not be independently confirmed. Supermarket stock and pricing move; treat this as a guide.

Beer	ABV	Pack	Price approx June 2026	How it is made gluten free
Peroni Nastro Azzurro GF	5.1%	4x330ml bottles	around £7.25	Gluten removed from barley (enzymatic; endorsed by Italian Coeliac Association)
Daura Damm	5.4%	330ml single / 4x330ml	around £2.50 single / £6.00 four-pack	Gluten removed from barley (tests under 3ppm)
BrewDog Punk GF	5.4%	4x330ml cans	around £5.25	Gluten removed from barley (Clarex enzyme)
Old Speckled Hen GF	4.8%	500ml bottle	around £2.80 (unverified)	Gluten removed from barley
Wold Top Against the Grain	4.5%	500ml bottle	around £2.40 (unverified)	Naturally gluten free (brewed with maize; certified 5.1ppm)
Adnams Ease Up IPA GF	4.6%	500ml bottle	varies; check in store	Gluten removed from barley (Clarex enzyme; certified under 20ppm)
Vocation Heart and Soul	4.4%	330ml can	varies; check in store	Gluten removed from barley (Clarex enzyme; lab tested)
Gipsy Hill Bandit	3.8%	440ml can	around £2.60	Gluten removed from barley (Clarex enzyme; batch tested under 20ppm)
Tempest Modern Helles	4.1%	440ml can	around £3.30 (unverified)	Gluten removed (brewed with barley, oats and wheat; labelled gluten reduced, under 20ppm)
Prime Time Lager	4.2%	4x330ml cans	around £6.75 four-pack / £2.15 single	Gluten removed from barley (under 20ppm)
Prime Time IPA	4.2%	4x330ml cans	around £6.75 four-pack	Gluten removed from barley (under 20ppm)
Prime Time Lager Plus	4.2%	330ml / 4x330ml	around £6.75 four-pack (current price unverified)	Gluten removed from barley (under 20ppm)
Lowrise Lager	4.0%	330ml single	around £2.25	Labelled gluten free; GF grain method unconfirmed
Lowrise Hazy Pale Ale	4.0%	330ml single	around £2.25	Labelled gluten free; GF grain method unconfirmed
Empress Premium Lager	4.5%	330ml bottle	around £2.35 (unverified)	Labelled gluten free, organic, vegan; GF method unconfirmed
Celia Organic Lager	4.5%	330ml bottle	around £2.49 (unverified; check in store)	Naturally gluten free (brewed from sorghum; certified)
Hollyrood American GF Pale Ale	5.0%	500ml bottle	varies	GF method unconfirmed; possibly delisted as of June 2026

A few notes on the table. The Waitrose-exclusive lines are Gipsy Hill Bandit, Tempest Modern Helles, and the full Prime Time range: you will not find these at Tesco, Morrisons or Asda. The craft picks that set this range apart are the same names: Gipsy Hill, Tempest, Vocation and Wold Top. Hollyrood was showing as unavailable in multiple 2025 and 2026 data sources and may have been delisted; Celia Organic was historically stocked but could not be confirmed as of June 2026 so check before making a trip for it.

Our verdict on the range

The best supermarket range for gluten free beer in Britain. It is not close.

The craft lean is real and it matters. Gipsy Hill Bandit is a South London pale ale that actually tastes like one. Tempest Modern Helles is the kind of thoughtful lager that a craft drinker picks up without feeling like they are compromising. Vocation Heart and Soul is a credible session IPA from one of Yorkshire’s better independent breweries. Wold Top Against the Grain is the standout of the naturally gluten free section: a proper pale ale from a family farm in the Yorkshire Wolds, not a flat lager dressed up as a concession. These beers appear at Waitrose and essentially nowhere else in a supermarket aisle.

The mainstream anchors (Peroni, Daura, BrewDog Punk GF) are here too, which is exactly right. A range needs its approachable entry points. Adnams Ease Up IPA is a well-made choice for anyone who wants a heritage Suffolk brewer rather than the BrewDog default. Old Speckled Hen in gluten removed form is a genuine nod to the English pale ale tradition and a rare style sighting on any supermarket shelf.

The gaps are still there. No stout. No porter. No dedicated gluten free brewery (Bellfield, Thornbridge, Abbeydale) in the range at all. The Prime Time range is interesting as an exclusive, and the caffeinated Lager Plus is an oddity, but it is squarely in the low-calorie wellness lane rather than craft. And the price premium is real: a four-pack of Peroni GF at Waitrose costs noticeably more than the equivalent at a big four supermarket. You pay for the breadth and the craft lean.

Still: if you are buying gluten free beer from a supermarket, Waitrose is where you go.

The thing the shelf will not tell you

Of the 17 lines on the Waitrose shelf, two are naturally gluten free. Everything else where the method is confirmed is gluten removed from barley. That ratio is roughly the same as every other supermarket. Waitrose is better at what it stocks, but not fundamentally different in what it is.

Gluten removed beer starts as ordinary barley beer. An enzyme (usually Clarex) is added during or after fermentation to break down the gluten proteins until the beer tests below the legal limit of 20ppm. It legally qualifies as gluten free. For most people with gluten sensitivity it is fine.

For coeliacs, it is more complicated. The standard tests for gluten in beer were not designed to measure the kind of broken protein fragments that enzyme treatment produces, and a real number of coeliacs report symptoms from gluten removed beer that passes the 20ppm test. We explain the full picture in our guide to gluten removed versus naturally gluten free. It is worth reading before you decide whether the Waitrose shelf is safe for you specifically.

Naturally gluten free beer is brewed from grains that never contained gluten: sorghum, maize, millet, rice, buckwheat. No enzyme treatment needed. No barley proteins at any stage. At Waitrose those beers are Wold Top Against the Grain (maize, certified at 5.1ppm, well below the 20ppm threshold) and Celia Organic Lager (sorghum). Two options on an otherwise barley shelf.

For Lowrise, Empress and Hollyrood, the GF method is unconfirmed as of June 2026. The packaging and Waitrose listings describe them as gluten free, but the grain treatment or brewing method was not published clearly enough for us to classify them. If you need to know before buying, contact the brewery directly.

What we would actually buy, and where

From the Waitrose shelf as it stands, the honest picks depend on where you sit on gluten removed beer.

If you react to gluten removed beer, reach for Wold Top Against the Grain first. It is a genuinely well-made naturally gluten free craft beer: a pale ale with proper character, brewed with maize on a Yorkshire farm, certified well below the 20ppm threshold. Celia Organic Lager is the other naturally gluten free option if you can confirm it is in stock at your branch.

If gluten removed beer works for you, this shelf earns its premium. Vocation Heart and Soul is the session IPA to reach for: a craft brewery making a proper gluten free version of one of their core beers, not a watered-down concession. Gipsy Hill Bandit is the pick among the pale ales and one of the few things on any supermarket shelf that a craft drinker would choose without the gluten free caveat doing most of the work. Tempest Modern Helles is worth picking up for a well-crafted lager that sits in a different tier from the mainstream names. And Daura Damm remains one of the most thoroughly tested gluten removed lagers available anywhere, certified at under 3ppm, a long way below the legal threshold.

The limit of the Waitrose shelf, even this one, is style depth. No stout. No porter. No pilsner from a brewery that lives and breathes that style. The breweries that have built their whole identity around gluten free brewing, the ones where every beer they make is made to be genuinely free from, are not here.

That is what our beer directory is for. Browse by style, filter by naturally gluten free, and you will find things that no supermarket aisle has thought to stock yet. Our breweries directory covers the independent and dedicated producers worth knowing about. Use Waitrose for a genuinely good supermarket shop. Use the directory when you want to see how far this category actually goes.