<<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