ReferenceA map, a dataset, or a directory. It makes no recommendation.
Writers & Educators
Gluten-free brewing has a translation problem: the science sits behind paywalls in cereal-chemistry journals, the practice sits in brewery notebooks, and the public understanding is assembled from marketing copy. The people on this page work the gap: writing books and articles, teaching courses, running channels and communities where methods get explained rather than asserted. This site is one of them, and says so.
Page established 2026-08-25 · sections filled 2026-08-27.
How to read it — entry rules, and what a listing means
One owner, but the reader never has to leave. The full description of a person or organization lives in exactly one place: the role page owns the person, the subject page owns the work. But a short identity travels with the name wherever it appears: who they are, where they work, and why they are named here, in a sentence or two. You should never have to click somewhere else to find out who someone is.
Organizations sit inside the role they perform. Publications, courses, programmes and channels belong here alongside the people producing them.
Described, never endorsed. A listing is a map reference, not a recommendation, and implies no relationship with this site. Listing a writer is not agreement with what they have written.
What qualifies. A published body of work, a taught programme, or a maintained public channel. Private individuals are not listed without consent.
Corrections and removals: contact us.
The roster — who does the explaining
Robert Keifer — author of Gluten-Free Brewing (Brewers Publications, 2022), the category's book. Described on Homebrewers & Home Maltsters
Steve Carly Zangue Desobgo — cereal-science researcher and author; this page owns the person, the sorghum directory owns the textbook. The textbook, on the sorghum directory
Scott Janish — homebrew author; published millet germination and kilning parameters. Described on Homebrewers & Home Maltsters
Andrew Lavery — practitioner author of the five-stage home-malting tutorial, with temperature tables and grain-by-grain procedures. Described on Homebrewers & Home Maltsters · the tutorial
The Zero Tolerance wiki's maintainers — the club members who write and keep the community enzyme and grain reference. Credited as a body rather than by name, because the wiki is maintained collectively. The practitioner wing · the wiki's enzyme reference
C.I. Owuama — author of Brewing Beer with Sorghum (1999) and Sorghum: a cereal with lager beer brewing potential (1997). Process and equipment
Graham G. Stewart — brewing scientist and author of Saccharomyces species in the Production of Beer (2016). Yeast and fermentation
Annie Hill — brewing scientist; co-author with Stewart of Free Amino Nitrogen in Brewing (2019), the reference treatment of the constraint these worts run into. Process and equipment
Sten Aastrup — Novozymes' brewing application lead, and author of the enzymes-in-brewing chapters and handbooks the enzyme wing runs on. External enzymes
Jean-François Cruz — CIRAD engineer; author of Fonio, an African cereal (CIRAD, 2016) and coordinator of the Aval Fonio post-harvest program across five African countries. Fonio
Sanoussi Diakité — Senegalese engineer and teacher with a mechanical-engineering background; designer of the 1993 fonio husking machine. Fonio
Justin Potts — co-lead of the Advanced Sake Brewing Certification Course; a bilingual sake professional teaching Japanese technical practice to American brewers. Koji and grown enzymes · the course
Shima Enomoto — co-lead of the Advanced Sake Brewing Certification Course; the other half of the bilingual pairing through which koji-making instruction reaches North American brewers. Koji and grown enzymes · the course
Drew Budner — Professor of Chemistry, Coastal Carolina University; teaches and publishes on the fermentation chemistry of gluten-free beer, and has presented sorghum beer work at ASBC since 2017. Flavor and sensory
Mayo Clinic, as a public reference — a clinical institution that also publishes a lay reference on celiac disease, which is where a great many drinkers form their understanding before they ever read a beer label. Celiac and health
Gluten Free Home Brewing — carries some of the only running coverage this field gets, alongside its retail and education roles. Described on suppliers
This site — Gluten Free Brewer publishes the protocols, datasets, and directories this section indexes. Disclosure: our own entry. Why this site exists
Bodies & gatherings — the associations and events this role runs through
American Homebrewers Association. The field's national body: runs Homebrew Con and Learn to Homebrew Day, publishes Zymurgy, and owns the imprint that put out this category's only book. Homebrew and home malting
Brewers Publications. The AHA's publishing arm, and the publisher of the category's book-length treatment, the one conventional publishing institution in this field's record. Described on Homebrewers & Home Maltsters
Craft Beer & Brewing. A craft-brewing press outlet carrying gluten-free malting coverage, including the warmer-and-shorter germination guidance for millet and buckwheat. Homebrew and home malting
The Institute of Brewing & Distilling. Now the Chartered Institute of Brewers & Distillers. Publishes the Journal of the Institute of Brewing, which carries much of the enzyme and process literature this site cites, and recognizes the Heriot-Watt degrees. Process and equipment · the institute
AOAC International. Publisher of the Journal of AOAC International, the venue where analytical methods for gluten in food and drink are validated. Testing and certification
Brewing Society of Japan. The field's academic society in Japan, publisher of the Journal of the Brewing Society of Japan, and the body that formally designated koji mold the national fungus in 2006. Koji and grown enzymes · the journal archive
Nordic Food Lab. Copenhagen. Published koji history and process work aimed at cooks and fermenters, and among the earliest Western institutional efforts to document the technique outside Japan. Koji and grown enzymes
NC BioNetwork. North Carolina Community College System. Runs a sake brewing course covering koji culturing, rice steaming, fermentation and kasu filtration: workforce training rather than research. Koji and grown enzymes
Kentucky State University. An 1890 land-grant institution running an undergraduate Certificate in Fermentation and Distillation inside an agricultural college. Distilling
Kansas State Brewing and Fermentation Science course. A three-day program in brewing science, technology and sensory analysis, run through the university's grain science side. Yeast and fermentation · the course
KojiConnect: Japan. An in-person workshop in Japan run alongside a simultaneous online program, compressing the traditional three-day koji-making process into a single day. Koji and grown enzymes
Heriot-Watt University. Edinburgh. The brewing school behind the 1990s commercial-enzymes-on-sorghum work, and the source of the brewing degrees the institute above recognizes. External enzymes
The spirits and beverage trade press. Whisky Magazine for the whisky category, and beverage-industry publishers covering production, compliance and market movement across beer and spirits together. Distilling · Whisky Magazine
World Whiskies Awards. The whisky category's international competition, run by the Whisky Magazine publisher. Distilling · the awards
American Craft Spirits Association. The US trade association representing craft distillers, with an annual convention and an awards program. Distilling · the association
Working with them — how to pitch, cite, or learn from this role
If you are starting from nothing, start with this site's own orientation rather than a book — how to use this site says what to read in what order, and truly gluten-free sets the definition everything else here assumes.
If you want to learn the practice, not read about it, the taught programmes above teach distilling, sake and general fermentation science. The gluten-free method itself is written down rather than taught: the homebrew section carries the standard mash and the documented methods.
If you are citing this site, sources and references explains how claims here are sourced and hedged, and the terms are defined in the glossary.
If you are pitching a story, the outlets are in Bodies & gatherings above: the homebrew press and the beverage trade press. Both carry gluten-free coverage occasionally; neither has a reporter on this beat, which is recorded as a gap below.
If you have measurements rather than a story, the writers are not the shortest supply in this field: the numbers are. The research asks are written so any kettle can run them.
How this role connects — documented links to other roles and subjects
- The category's only book was written by a homebrewer. Keifer is a club member published by homebrewing's own imprint, which makes this role's most visible output an artifact of the amateur layer on homebrewers & home maltsters.
- The maintained reference has no byline. The Zero Tolerance wiki is this field's standing explanatory text, and it is credited as a body, a writing role performed collectively, indexed on the practitioner wing.
- The supplier is also the publisher. The dedicated gluten-free homebrew supply house carries the tutorials, the recipe library and much of the running coverage, so this role and suppliers are partly the same entity.
- The malting instruction comes from the press, not the trade. Home maltsters learn from magazine technique pieces and a practitioner tutorial rather than from maltsters, because no commercial gluten-free malthouse publishes a method.
- Journals are where this role and researchers meet. The Journal of the Institute of Brewing carries the enzyme and process work that researchers produce and this role translates: see internal enzymes.
- Teaching exists, but for adjacent categories. Every taught programme on this page teaches distilling, sake, or general fermentation science; the gluten-free brewing course is the missing one.
- Koji instruction is a translation job before it is a teaching job. The bilingual course leads above exist because the primary literature sits in Japanese, on koji and grown enzymes.
- Enzyme documentation is written by the seller's own scientist. The handbooks and technical sheets brewers rely on come from inside the supplier, which is why external enzymes is read against the house hedge rather than as neutral instruction.
- Fonio's processing literature has one author. A single engineer wrote both the book and the post-harvest program, so the fonio page and this role's coverage of the grain rest on the same source twice.
- Flavor writing is thin because the data is thin. There is little for this role to explain about taste in gluten-free beer, and flavor and sensory records why: most of these grains have no published volatile profile.
- Explaining risk belongs to the clinical role. What a celiac reader may safely drink is set by clinicians and advocacy bodies, not by brewing writers: see celiac and health.
- Label language is decided elsewhere and only reported here. What "gluten-free" and "gluten-removed" may claim is settled by regulators and labs & certifiers, on testing and certification.
- Traditional beverages are documented by food scientists. The written record of dolo, sesotho, munkoyo and the rest comes from university reviews rather than from beer writing: see traditional fermentation.
Who's missing — where this page's coverage runs out
- No course teaches gluten-free brewing. Every taught programme listed here teaches distilling, sake, or fermentation science in general. We have found no certificate, degree, or short course whose subject is brewing beer from gluten-free grain.
- There is no beat. Coverage comes from one supplier's blog and occasional pieces in the craft-brewing press. We have found no publication with a writer assigned to this category, which is why the running record is a retailer's.
- One book. The published book-length record of gluten-free brewing is a single 2022 title, alongside the sorghum and cereal-science textbook literature written for researchers rather than for brewers.
- The roster is English-language. The fonio literature is French, the koji literature Japanese, and the African sorghum-beer literature spread across both. Writers working outside English are under-represented here, and that is a limit of what we have read.
- No recognition exists for this writing. The awards on this page belong to spirits. We have found no award, fellowship, or prize that a gluten-free brewing writer could be judged by.
Write about or teach this work? Tell us.