PARCHED | BARLEY GETTING STARTED

If gluten-free beer hasn’t quite done it for you in the past, today is your lucky today. The first barley-based gluten-free beer just went on sale, which is good news for you and your taste buds. Called Pionier, it comes from German brewer Radeberger and hit markets in Germany today, The Drinks Business reports.

Gluten-free beer is traditionally made from alternative grains, like rice and millet, which means it never quite achieves a taste very close to beer made from barley. Pionier is made with a special “ultra-low gluten” kind of barley called Kebari, which the beer company developed in Australia.

Kebari does have very small amounts of gluten, but it contains “10,000 times less gluten than traditional strains,” Reuters says. It falls far below the World Health Organization’s limit for what can count as a gluten-free grain.

When you search for “gluten-free beer” on the internet, the first results that turn up are lists of brands “that actually taste good.” In other words, the fact that the gluten-free stuff doesn’t measure up is a given. Could Pionier change all of that?

Phin Ziebell, an agribusiness economist at National Australia Bank, tells Reuters that “a true gluten-free barley variety is a true game changer.”

It may be too early to tell, but we’ll be keeping a closer eye on the gluten-free beer market.

Though the beer is on sale only in Germany for now, the development of Kebari barley could mean good things for gluten-free beer around the world one day, and we’ll drink to that.

Prost!

Article was first seen here.