Wooden Robot releases new pale ale, sans gluten

Thankfully, science has come to the rescue, and Charlotte’s own Wooden Robot is riding the recent wave of “gluten reduced” beer releases. So affect your best German accent, and say Hallo to “Gluten Tag,” their new hop-forward pale ale sans gluten.

Wooden Robot’s Gluten Tag joins the ranks of pioneer Widmer Brothers with their Omission series, Wicked Weed’s highly-hopped Gluten Freek, Stone’s Delicious IPA, and the new-to-market Glütiny offerings from New Belgium.

This isn’t the first gluten-reduced beer to be born in the Queen City; Charlotte’s own Lenny Boy Brewing has created several sans-gluten beers using the same process. What do all these listed beers have in common, though? Simple: they actually taste like beer.

For those who appreciate the science of beer, here’s the nerdy rundown: 

An enzyme marketed as Clarity Ferm was originally developed to help brewers eliminate haze in their beers, until it was found to have another use: destroying the gluten proteins. It doesn’t matter what beer is made of, what grains are used in the mash bill, that gluten is a goner.

Basically, brewers simply brew beer like they normally would, with one minor change. When adding the yeast to the fermenter, they also pitch a small amount of the enzyme (about 12 milliliters per barrel of beer). While the yeast does its job of turning sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide, the enzyme breaks apart gluten proteins.

Where things get tricky is in how these beers are labeled. Under FDA guidelines, foods are considered gluten-free if measured gluten is found to be under a level of 20 parts per million (ppm). Clarity Ferm consistently reduces gluten levels below this threshold, to under half that measurement.

Beer labeling doesn’t fall under the FDA umbrella though; the TTB dictates how brewers market their products. They’re being extremely cautious here, and are ruling that any beer made with gluten-containing ingredients, regardless of the gluten content of the final product, needs to be labeled as “crafted to reduce gluten.”

Regardless of what jargon you decide to use, Wooden Robot has released a new pale ale, and it’s damn delicious. If you were given a flight of their offerings, I bet you’d guess wrong when asked to identify which one lacks gluten.

Interesting things are always happening in #cltbeer, and Gluten Tag’s release is no exception. This is good news for any gluten-free folks out there, hopelessly tied to wine or cider options when they visit local breweries. If Wooden Robot gets a positive reception, they’ve promised many more similar offerings in the future.