How we check every beer
Free From Beer exists so you can trust what you read here. This page sets out exactly how a beer gets onto the site, how its gluten free claim is checked, and where the limits of that checking are. If anything here is unclear, ask me.
Which beers make the site
Any beer sold in the UK that is marketed as gluten free, or that a brewery publishes a gluten free claim for, is in scope. I do not list a beer unless I can find a verifiable source for its gluten status, whether that is the brewery's own page, its published lab testing, or its ingredients. Beers with no findable gluten information are left off rather than guessed at.
The gluten ladder
UK law lets a beer be called gluten free once it tests below 20 parts per million, but that single label hides a lot. Every beer sits on one of four clear rungs so you can see at a glance where it stands.
Brewed without barley or wheat in the first place, from grains that never contained gluten. The safest rung.
Independently tested below 10 parts per million. Comfortably inside the legal limit.
Tested below 20 parts per million, the UK legal threshold for calling a beer gluten free.
Brewed with barley or wheat, then treated to bring the gluten down. Often not suitable for coeliacs, even when the can says gluten free.
How each beer is placed
A beer goes on the rung that matches what the brewery publishes. Where there is an independent test figure, the beer sits on the rung for that figure. Where a beer is brewed with barley or wheat and then treated to reduce gluten, it is marked gluten reduced, whatever the front of the can says. Where a brewery states a beer is not suitable for coeliacs, that warning is carried in plain words on the beer's own page, however good the beer is.
What I verify, and what I cannot
I read and record what each brewery publishes. I do not run my own laboratory tests, so the gluten figures here are the brewery's own, attributed to them. Where a figure cannot be confirmed, the beer is placed conservatively and the page says so rather than implying a precision that does not exist. Nothing is invented. If a claim cannot be sourced, it is not made.
Independence and corrections
Breweries do not pay to appear on Free From Beer. Some links out to buy a beer may earn a small commission, which never affects whether a beer is listed or what the verdict says. If something here is wrong or out of date, tell me and I will correct it.
Maintained by Simon, who was diagnosed coeliac in July 2024.