Gluten-Free Beer – “Drinking Is Believing”
“It isn’t just what we took out, it’s what we left in.” So claims Omission, one of the first breweries in the country to craft gluten-free beer from traditional ingredients. Their motto, “drinking is believing,” has challenged hundreds of skeptics, gluten-free or not, to discover something most thought impossible: a gluten-free beer that tastes like…beer.
And good beer at that.
Omission is the 2006 brainchild of Portland’s Widmer Brothers Brewing, which has been crafting traditional beer for nearly 30 years. The company turned an eye to creating the perfect gluten-free brew around the time the nation was seeing an uptick in diagnoses of the gluten-sensitive condition known as Celiac disease.
Where previous attempts at gluten-free brewing had turned to sorghum, buckwheat, and even quinoa, success had been spotty. Most following a gluten-free diet cut beer out entirely.
“Beer really is a connector in our society,” explains Omission CEO Terry Michaelson, who was diagnosed with Celiac disease 12 years ago. Michaelson said the goal is “to allow people that have sensitivity to have a chance to sit down with friends, [with] a beer everyone can enjoy.”
So Omission brews with barley and removes gluten during the brewing process. While standards on what counts as gluten-free are often contested, Omission brings gluten content in its beer down below 0.002%, the FDA’s threshold for gluten-free classification. Each batch is sent to an independent laboratory for testing before being shipped across the United States.
You’d expect such an extraction to change the face of the beer entirely.
You’d be wrong. Hand a few bottles out to your friends and bet them a dollar they can’t guess what’s missing. You’ll likely win enough to buy another Omission, which is something you will want to do.
For new initiates to the beerniverse, many with Celiac disease included, light-bodied Omission Lager provides the perfect starting place. Smooth and approachable even as it hints toward bitter hops that even out the maltiness, each golden glassful is drinkable in an all-four-seasons kind of way. For anyone after a fuller flavor, Omission Pale Ale offers more hops on the dollar, boasting all the caramel character of the Cascadia variety and coming off round and warming on a rainy afternoon. Whichever you choose, we can promise that gluten is one thing you’ll never miss.
