Women Enjoying Beer

Gluten Free & Vegetarian Beer & Food Tasting Menu

Sep 10, 2010

Last night was another lively Women Enjoying Beer monthly meet up. The women filled the special side room at Standing Stone Brewing Company to participate in the gluten free and vegetarian beer and food event.

Fresh veggies are gluten free & vegetarian

Of course, we all learned more – and we did in fact have 2 individuals in the group who are Celiac – gluten intolerant, however severe or mild. For omnivores, it’s a non concern. However for the 2 – 3.2 million people in the states who are afflicted, it’s a big deal. Especially if you want to enjoy beer.

Hopefully it makes omnivores appreciate the myriad choices that are available with no restrictions.

The format this time was to pour small taster glasses full of each of the four beverages and then serve the foods, passed around family style (remember – this is extremely social!). Then each person can taste the food with a bit of each beverages as they wished. It was enlightening for all of us.

Beverage Menu

• Wandering Aengus Dry Oaked Dry Apple Cider, Salem, Oregon
• Wyder’s Dry Pear Hard Cider, Middlebury, Vermont
• Bard’s Gluten Free Sorghum Beer, Utica, New York
• Redbridge Gluten Free Sorghum Beer, St. Louis, Missouri

One interesting thing per gluten free guidelines is that in order to be labeled Gluten Free it has to be less than 20ppm (parts per million) gluten. Curious – since there still maybe residual gluten from processing. So severe cases need to be cautious and do a little bit of research perhaps first.

Gluten Free choices

Clearly ciders are not beers. That said, there’s a terrific selection and variety available, no danger of gluten in them and they provide a nice choice alternative.

Food menu

• Lisanatti Almond Cheeses
• Fresh seasonal melons – mmmmmm! Great with the ciders
• Hummus with garlic, cilantro and warm spices like cumin and cinnamon
• Veggie shooters in a taster glass with bleu cheese dressing

The beers most certainly tasted remarkably different with the foods than the ciders. So it was great to be able to talk about complementary flavors as well as contrasting flavors.

There are plenty of ways to accommodate. And with approximately 1 in 133 Americans being Celiac, there’s an enormous opportunity to make high quality beers and ciders to serve these folks.

Big opportunity – kind of like thinking about properly addressing the female beer consumer, eh?

Cheers to a tasty and gluten free adventure!

Tags: almond cheese, Bard's, celiac disease, cider, gluten free beer, hummus, opportunity, Redbridge, vegetables, Wandering Aengus, Wyder's