August 2018 – Low Gluten in Beer

I owed you the test result from the Chinese beer poll back in December last year. I haven’t posted the result as we had other test results with higher priority – like the tests from Adam and Joe M. And I have to apologise as I wasn’t able to get the winning beer (Yanjing) and not even the runner-up (Zhujiang). Finally I found Snow (3rd in the poll) in a small shop in Shanghai. If you don’t know where to go in Shanghai you are lost. Mainly Western beer brands are available beside the most famous Tsingtao which I already tested in 2014.

And I wanted to explore the city and not only look for beer. Actually I found a good shop with a lot of beers but I wasn’t able to buy them as the only accepted way to pay was Alipay. China really lives the digitalisation. Almost everything can be paid with mobile phones using WeChat for instance. Anyway, I tested Snow then. A very light, American lager style beer with low alcohol and not much taste.

Beer: Snow / 雪花啤酒
Producer: China Resources Snow Breweries Ltd.
Originating country: China
Brewing location: China
Bottle size: 500 ml
Alcohol by volume: 3.3%
Ingredients: Water, Malt Extract (9%), Starch, Corn, Hop Extract, Yeast according to internet research
Miscellaneous: –

Test Kit: Imutest Gluten-in-Food Kit

Test result: The test result is negative. According to the instructions there should appear a clearly visible pink test spot on the left of the test area ( T ) to indicate the presence of gluten. The pink spot on the right test area ( C ) is a control spot and indicates that the extract/sample is suitable, the test has been performed correctly and all reagents are active. Even though the detection limit in this kit is very low (1-2 ppm) and the test is negative please note this is not a medical advice – please see also my facts page.

5 years ago I started this blog without knowing what it’s going to be, whether it will be accepted by people with Celiac Disease or Gluten Sensitivity or if it makes sense at all to run a website which focuses on (low) gluten in beer. Considering the feedback, the questions and opinions I received via contact form, email and in the post comments I think, yes it was a good decision.

We have conducted more than 80 gluten tests on beer with different test kits, with different thresholds in different regions of the world. Due to job and family time is limited and the more important was the contribution from all of you, especially authors Adam, big in japan, Joe M and Thomas – big THANK YOU to you guys. But also every comment with feedback on the test results, reactions on gluten, discussions on the test kits and its antibodies was useful and can help others to identify if regular beer with no or low gluten could be an option.

We have 20.000 visitors per month on the website (real visitors, no spiders, bots, crawlers etc.). This makes me some sort of proud as I didn’t expect this at all. And it’s still growing. I also thank the people who donated – this helps to keep the site ad-free.

Five years is a long time and I will not promise to run this site another five years but I will not stop before we have achieved 100 tests!

Cheers Steffen

test the gluten content of your beer

Month: August 2018

Snow Gluten Test

5 Years lowgluten.org