Although pleasant enough, most gluten-free beers don’t precisely replicate the flavor of a barley brew and might not find many adherents in the general population.
That rankled Terry Michaelson, chief executive of the Craft Brew Alliance based in Portland, Ore. “Beer in our society is a connector, something for sitting down with friends and laughing and sharing.”
Here’s the catch: They’re available only in Oregon. Michaelson wants to go nationwide, but there are regulatory hurdles.
The federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau has authority over most alcoholic beverages. But beer made without barley isn’t covered by its definition of “malt beverage,” and oversight defaults to the Food and Drug Administration. The FDA allows breweries to label these beers “gluten-free” if they contain fewer than 20 parts per million of gluten. Full details here.
Omission labels claim the beer contains 6 ppm or fewer of gluten. But to ship a barley-based beer out of state, says Michaelson, the brewery needs label approval from the Tax and Trade Bureau. And the bureau does not currently allow any statement about gluten content on the labels of these beers, says specialist Tom Hogue, the agency’s director for congressional and public affairs.
The bureau, Hogue added, is drawing up guidelines that will permit some statement about gluten content to let the buyer make an informed decision. Asked when those guidelines would be released, he answered, “We’re working to get them out as fast as we can.”
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