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

I asked Dr Janssen, a subscriber to our cel-pro discussion group,
if he could comment on the gluten content of alcoholic beverages,
based upon the experience of his testing lab.  I include his
reply below (with his permission), along with part of his bio from
the cel-pro roster.

In his reply, you will see references to milligrams of gluten per
liter of beverage.  A liter is about a quart. While there is no
proven standard of how much gluten a Celiac can safely consume per
day, a number of cel-pro members feel 10 mg per day is safe and that 100 mg
is not.

Bill Elkus
Los Angeles

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Frederik Willem Janssen

Head of the Chemistry Department, Food Inspection Service in Zutphen,
a subsidiary of the Inspectorate of Health Protection (similar to the
FDA in America).  Our lab has a special interest in.... modified
gluten, edible packaging materials (which may contain gluten), and
detection of hidden gluten in foods, including the development of
improved detection methods.  .... I am also a member of the
Medical/Scientific Advisory Committee of the Dutch Celiac Society.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dr Janssen replies:

Yes, destillation quite effectively removes the gluten and it is very
unlikely that splashes of fermented (we call it "moutwijn", i.e. malt wine,
can't remember the correct English word for it) will be carried over to the
final destillate. If they are present they must have been added afterwards.
A couple of years ago we analyzed some distilled liquors for presence of
gluten proteins but we couldn't detect any in this set (about 40).  The
test in beer (a set of 50 different brands) showed that most brands (35)
did contain immunoreactive protein in amounts between 1 and 200 mg/liter.
Only 15 contained less than 1 mg/liter.  There was a strong correlation
between the gluten content and whether wheat had been used as an
ingredient!

I found a report of an investigation published in 1992 in a periodical of
the Flemish Celiac Society about immunological determination of gluten in
beer and some distilled liquors.  This confirmed our findings that the
gluten content of beer is quite variable (the authors found levels from
zero to 400 mg /liter gluten).

They did find gluten in distilled liquors! The levels varied from zero to
200 mg gluten/liter. The highest amount was found in a "Creme de Framboise"
(200 mg/liter) but second was a French brandy VSOP with a score of 180 m
g/liter. A Dutch gin was negative, which might be an indication that gluten
in these type of liquors is not a carry over to the destillate! My guess is
that these gluten is derived from the caramel coloring, though there is no
proof about this yet. I always advise sensitive patients to abstain from
brown colored liquors!

I would like to stress that the determination of gluten in these types of
products is very unreliable and we have to count with false positive as
well as false negative values. The gluten proteins could have been broken
down to small (but still toxic) peptides and in that case a sandwich-type
ELISA might produce false negative results because in that case you always
need to two epitopes (binding sites for the antiserum) on one molecule to
get a positive reaction. A competitive type assay would be the choice for
this type of product but we haven't tried this type of analysis on it yet
(we did use it on a soy sauce which was prepared with wheat gluten and
didn't find any gliadin, which might be an indication that gluten had been
broken down to very small peptides less than one binding site).

gluten = 2* gliadin

Best wishes,

Frederik Willem Janssen, Zutpen, The Netherlands