Why Free From Beer exists
Finding a gluten free beer you can trust in the UK is harder than it should be. The label rarely tells you the full story, and the difference between one beer and the next can matter a great deal if you have coeliac disease.
Most beer sites gloss over that difference. Free From Beer does not. Every one of the 254 beers here is reviewed, and every gluten free claim is checked against what the brewery actually publishes. The aim is simple. You should be able to find a beer you will genuinely enjoy, know exactly where it sits on gluten, and order it with confidence.
What gluten free actually means on a beer
Not all gluten free beer is equal. Some is brewed without gluten grains at all. Some is brewed with barley and then treated to bring the gluten down. UK law lets a beer be called gluten free once it tests below 20 parts per million, but that single label hides a lot. So every beer on the site sits on one of four clear rungs.
Brewed without barley or wheat in the first place, from grains that never contained gluten. The safest rung.
Independently tested below 10 parts per million. Comfortably inside the legal limit.
Tested below 20 parts per million, the UK legal threshold for calling a beer gluten free.
Brewed with barley or wheat, then treated to bring the gluten down. Often not suitable for coeliacs, even when the can says gluten free.
If you want the longer version, the gluten free beer guides explain the labels, the testing, and what is safe for coeliacs in plain English.
How every beer here is checked
Every beer is read against its primary source first: the brewery's own page and published information. Where a beer is independently tested to a level, it goes on the rung that matches the published figure. Where it is brewed with barley or wheat and treated, it is marked gluten reduced, whatever the front of the can says. Where a brewery states a beer is not suitable for coeliacs, that warning is carried in plain words on the beer's own page, however good the beer is. Nothing is invented. If a claim cannot be sourced, it is not made.
The full process is on the methodology page.
What is on the site
Who writes it
I am Simon. I was diagnosed coeliac in July 2024. Finding and drinking new beers had been my favourite thing in the world, and almost overnight most of it was off the table. The gluten free options were out there, but the information was a mess: brewery small print, retailer listings and forum threads that still left me unsure what was actually safe.
So I started doing the work properly, in one place. I read what each brewery publishes, put every beer on the right rung of the ladder above, taste what I can, and write a plain verdict on how it drinks. Where a beer is not suitable for coeliacs, I say so, however much I want it to be.
Being coeliac is not the end of good beer. There are genuinely brilliant gluten free beers out there now: crisp lagers, juicy hazy pales, rich dark stouts, made by breweries who care about getting them right. The choice is better than it has ever been, and it keeps growing. So let's celebrate all of it.
Free From Beer is my passion project. It is the site I wish I had the week I was diagnosed.
Independent and honest
Breweries do not pay to appear here. The verdicts are written to help you choose, not to sell a particular beer. If I have something wrong, tell me and I will fix it.
Ready to find one? Browse every beer, explore by style, or see the breweries behind them.
Simon, Free From Beer