Technological and Engineering Trends for Production of Gluten-Free Beers

Beer is the main alcoholic beverage consumed worldwide. it is essentially composed of malt, adjuncts or grist, hops, water and metabolites produced by yeast. produced regularly with barley, it is unsuitable for patients with celiac disease due to the presence of storage proteins known as hordeins. a recent boom in the production of gluten-free beers has been attributed to the awareness of celiac disease and the significant boost in the gluten-free market size. several strategies have been recognized as suitable gluten-free brewing procedures: by using non-gluten grains, non-grain sources such as sugars, syrups and honey and enzymatic and microbial treatments of barley worts to reduce to non-significant levels (<20 ppm/l), the peptides or epitopes which trigger celiac disease. since the traditional brewing process uses barley, the use of other grains, such as rice, maize, sorghum, buckwheat or different types of millets, involves differences in both malting and mashing procedures especially in terms of process times and temperatures. sorghum has been especially recognized for its potential to substitute barley since it is widely used in many countries of africa to create traditional opaque beers, but compared to barley malt lacks of sufficient diastatic power due to the lower synthesis of both α- and β-amylases, and additionally, the starch requires higher temperatures for gelatinization. likewise, rice, maize, millets and buckwheat are being used as source of both malt and grist with similar problems as sorghum. potential future approaches involve the genetic engineering of barley in order to remove the peptides of the storage proteins that cause the allergic reaction on celiac patients and the employment of recombinant yeasts or other fermenting microorganisms that express prolyl endoproteinases which hydrolyze celiac immunoreactive epitopes into non-harmful peptides.