<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>

I have received quite knowledgeable answers.  Unfortunately, I lost a few
of them, my apologies.  If any of you has the patience to re-post it to
me, I'll make an other summary and include them.
 ==========================================================================
"I doubt the problem is that simple. Beer contains barley malt, which is
mostly converted to alcohol. There are remantant of all of the original
ingredients. Heineken Beer Company claims their beer is GF, based on the
current EC standards for geluten testing. They indicate that that standard
may by tightened by 10X and they will still be below the EC limit.

It is hard to know what to think."
 ==========================================================================
"Mireille, that's incorrect.

First of all, malt is NOT a flavoring. Malted barley is the basic brewing
material itself. Except for the handful of GF specialty beers, all beers
are barley malt based.

Second, all beer is fermented, not distilled. Fermentation does NOT
eliminate gluten.

Third, if the breweries say they cannot detect gluten, then they are NOT
using the standard ELISA test used by food manufacturers. If they were
using it, gluten would definitely be detected.

A summary of scientific evidence was published by GIG in their Summer 2002
newsletter, you would need to contact Cynthia Kupper at GIG to find out
how to access the source material. But you know as well as I do that some
people want to believe what they want to believe, and will flat refuse to
believe you even if you shove scientific evidence under their noses."

P.S.: Here is the text of a post I made to the List on 11/24/02:

For the second time, someone has posted a misleading statement from
Anheuser-Busch. In response, I'd like to present actual scientific evidence
that beer does contain gluten.

The Summer 2002 issue of the GIG Newsletter has a report on presentations
made at the May 2002 Digestive Disease Week. The report says that Dr.
Skelly
et al from the UK presented a scientific abstract showing the reliability
of
the dry strip immunochemistry test used in gluten home testing kits for
determining gluten in alcoholic beverages. To test the accuracy, the
results
were compared with ELISA testing, the "gold standard" for determining
gluten
content.

Five beers and two whiskies were tested. The "control" was Coca Cola, known
to be GF.

The results were that all five beers (one of which was Budweiser) tested
positive for gluten. The exact levels from the ELISA test were shown, and
all of them were well above detectable and safe levels. The results for the
home test kit showed two of the beers testing Positive (50-200 ppm range)
but the other three had so much they overloaded the test kit (>10%
gliadin).
The two whiskies and the Coca-Cola showed zero gliadin in the ELISA test
and
Negative in the home test kit.

GIG's comment: "As you can see, fermented beverages clearly contain gluten
in levels unacceptable for consumption on a gluten free diet, while whiskey
(no matter its starting material) showed no gluten in the end product."

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