Month: December 2013

Guinness Gluten Test

On 28/12/2013

Today I tested the famous Guinness Extra Stout beer. I occasionally drank draught Guinness in bars but I never tried it in bottles before. Well, a good Guinness is best served in an old pub with friends coming in a pint glass with a creamy, dome-shaped head. For a gluten test the bottled Guinness will do it as the ingredients should be the same.

Beer: Guinness
Producer: St. James’s Gate Brewery/Diageo
Originating country: Ireland
Brewing location: Ireland
Bottle size: 0.33 l = approx. 11 Oz.
Alcohol by volume: 4.1%
Ingredients: water, barley malt, roasted barley, hops, yeast (translated from German)
Miscellaneous: –

Test Kit: Imutest Gluten-in-Food Kit

Test result: There is a clearly visible pink test spot on the left of the test area ( T ) which indicates the presence of gluten. According to the instructions a “very low gluten” level of 20 to 100 ppm should give a test spot which is weaker or similar in intensity to that of the control spot ( C ). Please find some more information here. The test spot appears lighter than the control spot.

On a scale from 1 to 20 I would rate Guinness 3/4 so in this test it has around 20-30 ppm. Even though this test is positive please note it is not a medical advice – see my facts page.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

By Steffen

On 21/12/2013

In News

2013 Retrospective

By Steffen

On 19/12/2013

In News

Thank you:
First I would like to thank all visitors, friends and registered users for your interest in my site. I started the site in August and the feedback is amazing. Thanks to all people who send nice words via Email, contact form or post comments. The number of visitors is also constantly increasing which makes me proud and confident to have set up something useful for a lot of people. Please see some statistics at the end of this post.

Emotions:
The gluten content in beer seems to be a very emotional topic. I posted a few of the results in some forums and sometimes I was surprised by the feedback. Beside those who were really thankful to have some test results and facts there are people who completely ignore all these facts by spreading paranoia and misinformation.

Fear sells:
The gluten free lobby is very active to tell people that they should create a completely new life by buying their gf products. It’s a huge industry already with the interest to sell and make money – and you know how expensive these products are. Unfortunately a lot of people in these forums are already manipulated and follow the cult. I stopped posting in these forums as it is really useless to discuss with ignorant people. It actually embraced me to continue testing beer and showing the gf industry that even not officially gf labelled beers can have as low gluten as the official ones.

Barley is a cereal killer 😉
I also read some funny statements. For instance one guy said that barley kills him. I did not comment this paranoid statement. Don’t get me wrong, I do know there are people who really suffer from gluten and should avoid it but some statements are just hilarious.

Again:
I have to say it a few more times. The intention of this site is to test beer on the level of gluten. For some people low gluten might be absolutely OK whilst for others only absolutely no gluten is acceptable. And that’s just fine, it should be everyone’s free decision to drink a beer with high, low or no gluten. I will focus on LOW gluten as the name of site already indicates.

Contribution:
I wished more people to contribute and I hope with time the site will become more popular with more contributors. Please purchase test kits (they are not that expensive), test your favourite beers and post the results here. So we can build a huge database with the level of gluten in all kinds of beer from all over the world.

Here are some statistics:
The lowgluten.org visitors by country:

USA 42%, Germany 32%, UK 8%, Spain 5%, Poland 4%, Australia 2%, Sweden 2%, Finland 1%, Italy 1%, Other 3%

This is how the people found lowgluten.org using search engines (top 10):

low+gluten+beer
low+gluten+beers
gluten+content+of+beer
corona+low+gluten
american+beers+with+low+gluten+content
gluten+testing+of+beers
is+corona+low+in+gluten
gluten+content+beer
gluten+content+level+in+beers
gluten+testing+beer+at+home

Budweiser Gluten Test

By Steffen

On 07/12/2013

In Tests

Budweiser is probably the most famous American beer. When beer appears in American movies or TV series it’s a Budweiser. Probably to show average American behaviour as this beer also tastes very average. The name Budweiser is derived from the German name of the Czech city of Budejovice (Budweis) and so it’s a Budweiser. Thank god it’s not coming from Hamburg 🙂

It tastes watery and sweet but it is actually not that bad. Still it can not be compared with the Original Czech Budweiser which has the same alcohol but tastes very different to the American Budweiser. And this is the gluten test result for this famous beer:

Beer: Budweiser
Producer: Anheuser-Busch
Originating country: USA
Brewing location: USA
Bottle size: 16 oz (approx. 470 ml)
Alcohol by volume: 5.0%
Ingredients: water, barley malt, hops, yeast, rice
Miscellaneous: Ingredients listed in German as product sold in Germany

Sorry for the poor picture quality but I did not have enough light.

Test Kit: GlutenTox Home Kit

I tested with a threshold of 5 ppm. The limit of detection depends on the number of drops taken from the extraction solution, please find some more information here.

Test result: The test is negative. In this test Budweiser has less than 5 ppm gluten (or even no gluten). However, it is not a medical advice – please see my facts page.