ReferenceA map, a dataset, or a directory. It makes no recommendation.
Homebrew & Home Malting Research Directory
The labs study grains, the maltsters run production, and the category's actual experimentation — new grists, enzyme schedules, malting trials, style recreations — happens in garages and kitchens. This page maps that practice's record: the bodies that organise it, the people who wrote it down, its supply and equipment layer, its literature, the connections its evidence supports, and the gaps where its coverage runs out.
The people are on the other axis. The practitioners themselves — the clubs, the guild, the forum, and the public-facing homebrewers and home maltsters — are indexed by role on Homebrewers & Home Maltsters in the community directory, which owns those descriptions. This page owns the work; that page owns the people. Where a name appears in both, it appears here for what it published.
How to read it: the same categories and the same rules as the grain directories: verified facts, primary links, dated entries, and descriptions that are never endorsements. A listed supplier is described, never recommended; the verification questions apply to every purchase.
Directory established 2026-08-25 · split along the role/subject axis 2026-08-25 (DR-0053) · restructured to the research-directory section standard 2026-08-26.
Key topics — find entries by subject, across every category
How to read it: each topic lists the entries that touch it, so a reader hunting one subject can jump straight to the right sections.
Start here — the safety literature this practice has never absorbed. Home malting holds grain warm, wet and germinating for days, which is also how you grow fungi. The published surveys of sorghum-based malt, wort and beer found aflatoxins, fumonisin B1 and zearalenone; no home-malting guide we have found mentions any of it (Supply & Methods, Literature, How the field connects, Research gaps).
Why gluten-free brewing needs added enzymes at all — the club's published figures put barley malt at 418 °WK against malted sorghum's 54 °WK, roughly one-eighth. Rice malt is listed at 231 °WK, which sits oddly against its reputation as the inert grain (Supply & Methods, How the field connects).
Germination temperature as a flavor lever — it governs proteolysis in sorghum and millet, proteolysis sets free amino nitrogen, and free amino nitrogen is the ester precursor behind the category's aroma gap. The home maltster's thermostat reaches the finished beer (Supply & Methods, Contributors, How the field connects).
Where a homebrewer actually buys — the dedicated supply hub, the gluten-free malthouses, and the enzyme shelf (Supply & Methods, Institutions).
Home malting, as a procedure — the five-stage tutorial, the community's own methods, and this site's acceptance and safety gates (Supply & Methods, Literature).
How a gluten-free beer gets judged — BJCP Category 31A sends ingredient-gluten-free beers to Alternative Grain Beer and sends process-removed beers back to their base style (Standards & Events, How the field connects).
The enzyme shortlist, converged on twice — the club wiki and this site's production protocols reached the same five enzymes independently, and disagree on dose (Supply & Methods, How the field connects).
Where the money actually is — the awarded grants that have paid for gluten-free malting and brewing research ($150,000 at Nevada, $53,514 at Penn State, both to universities), the open routes nobody in this field has applied to, the two sized to a practitioner rather than a farm, the education funding that is reliably available, and the one obvious-looking program that excludes these grains outright (Funders & Programs, How the field connects).
Why the evidence layer is thin — nobody has been refused; nobody has applied. What that explains about everything else on this page (Funders, Research gaps, How the field connects).
1. Institutions — the clubs, forums, and bodies that hold this practice's knowledge
This field has no universities and no laboratories. Its institutions are a club, a forum, and a shop, which is the finding, not a shortfall in the search.
Zero Tolerance Gluten Free Brewing. The category's dedicated homebrew club, and the only body we have found maintaining a structured gluten-free brewing knowledge base rather than a thread archive. Its wiki carries the club's enzyme reference among other maintained pages. The wiki · announced here · Verified 2026-08-26
HomebrewTalk. Not an institution by intent, but functionally the field's archive: the long-running malting threads are where home-malting procedure was worked out in public and where it still lives. A forum doing a research library's job is worth recording as such. The long-running malting thread · Verified 2026-08-26
The dedicated homebrew supplier, as a publisher. The field's supply hub is also its press and its data publisher: step-by-step tutorials by skill level, the home-malting guide it hosts, a maintained recipe library, and community-generated measurements. The company itself is described on suppliers; what matters here is that a retailer carries a meaningful share of this practice's written record, which is what happens to a field with no institution to carry it instead. The tutorials and blog · Verified 2026-08-26
American Homebrewers Association. The field's national body: runs Homebrew Con and Learn to Homebrew Day, publishes Zymurgy, and through Brewers Publications put out the category's only book. A gluten-free brewer's institutional home is this one, borrowed. AHA · Verified 2026-08-26
Brewers Association. The AHA's parent body, and the source of the industry-side technical material that reaches practitioners. Brewers Association · Verified 2026-08-26
Beer Judge Certification Program. The body that certifies judges and maintains the style guidelines a gluten-free entry is assessed against. BJCP · Verified 2026-08-26
Craft Beer & Brewing. The craft-brewing press outlet carrying the most substantial gluten-free malt coverage we have found outside the homebrew press, and the source of the warmer-and-shorter germination guidance for millet and buckwheat indexed below. Gluten-free craft malt · Verified 2026-08-26
Brew Your Own. The homebrew press's standing home-malting and gluten-free brewing coverage: the four-stage method, the dehydrator guidance, and the moisture endpoints this page's equipment section relies on. BYO on home malting · BYO on gluten-free brewing · Verified 2026-08-26
Heriot-Watt University, International Centre for Brewing and Distilling. Where the germination-temperature work on sorghum and millet proteolysis was done, the academic group whose findings map most directly onto what a home maltster controls. The study · Verified 2026-08-26
Technical University of Munich — Weihenstephan. Source of the malting-conditions work on sorghum as a raw material for fermented beverages, and the same institution this directory indexes on celiac and health and the enzyme pages. The study · Verified 2026-08-26
Brewers Publications. The American Homebrewers Association's publishing arm, and the publisher of the category's only book-length treatment. The one conventional publishing institution in this field's record. Publisher page · Verified 2026-08-26
2. Contributors — the people who wrote this practice down
Listed for published work, never as an endorsement of a supplier or a method. The practitioners themselves are on Homebrewers & Home Maltsters.
Robert Keifer. Author of Gluten-Free Brewing (Brewers Publications, 2022), the category's only book: ingredients, sourcing, process, and thirty-plus tested recipes, per the publisher. The single most complete written treatment this field has. Publisher page · Verified 2026-08-26
Andrew Lavery. Author of the field's most complete home-malting guide: five stages, temperature tables, and procedures for millet, buckwheat, maize, rice and sorghum. Hosted by the dedicated supplier rather than published independently, which is itself a fact about how this knowledge circulates. Advanced malting tutorial · Verified 2026-08-26
The Zero Tolerance wiki's maintainers. Collectively the authors of the only comparative diastatic-power figures and published enzyme doses we have found for gluten-free grains. Credited as a body rather than by name because the wiki is maintained collectively; the club itself is in Institutions above. The wiki's reference · Verified 2026-08-26
Joe Morris. Founder of the Zero Tolerance club, per the American Homebrewers Association's own account, the person who turned scattered gluten-free homebrewers into a field with a meeting place. Indexed here for organising the practice's knowledge; the role entry is on homebrewers & home maltsters. The AHA's account · Verified 2026-08-26
Scott Janish. Homebrew author whose published millet write-up documents germination and kilning parameters for the grain, practitioner process data put in the open, which is exactly the contribution this page's gaps say the field is short of. Brewing with millet · Verified 2026-08-26
Martin Zarnkow — Weihenstephan. A standing figure in the malting science of non-barley cereals, and co-author of the sorghum malting-conditions work this page relies on for its parameter guidance. The study · Verified 2026-08-26
Nadezda Prusova and colleagues. Followed free and conjugated Alternaria and Fusarium mycotoxins through malt production and double-mash brewing, the study that answers what actually reaches the finished beer. The study · Verified 2026-08-26
Israel Adekoya and colleagues. Characterized the mycobiota and co-occurring mycotoxins of maize-based opaque beer — traditional practice measured, and the closest analogue in the literature to an unregulated small-batch operation. The study · Verified 2026-08-26
Agnieszka Salamon and colleagues. Characterized buckwheat malt grains for fermented food production — one of the few peer-reviewed characterizations of a gluten-free malt this practice actually uses. The study · Verified 2026-08-26
Karl Habler and colleagues — Technical University of Munich. Traced the fate of Fusarium toxins through malting, which is the mechanism behind this page's central safety finding. The study · Verified 2026-08-26
Chido R. Kaela, Mariska Lilly and John P. Rheeder. Surveyed mycotoxins in smallholder-produced sorghum and pearl millet — the incoming-grain half of the same problem. The survey · Verified 2026-08-26
Bharati Odhav and Vivek Naicker. Measured mycotoxins in South African traditionally brewed beers, confirming the risk reaches the glass. The study · Verified 2026-08-26
Yuki Chiba, John H. Bryce and Vincent Goodfellow — Heriot-Watt. Authors of the germination-temperature study on sorghum and millet: the paper that turns "germinate warm" into a number a home maltster can set a thermostat to. The study · Verified 2026-08-26
Abdulmoneim Hassani, Martin Zarnkow and Thomas Becker — Weihenstephan. Authors of the malting-conditions study on sorghum for fermented beverages. The study · Verified 2026-08-26
D.O. Nkwe, J.E. Taylor and B.A. Siame. Authors of the survey of fungi, aflatoxins, fumonisin B1 and zearalenone in sorghum-based traditional malt, wort and beer — the safety literature this practice has never absorbed. The study · Verified 2026-08-26
3. Projects & Grants — funded or actively producing work
What qualifies: work currently funded or actively producing output on gluten-free brewing at practitioner scale, with a public record.
This site's research asks. Open experimental questions written so that a homebrew kettle can answer them, the field's only structured attempt we have found to convert practitioner brewing into published measurement. Research asks · Verified 2026-08-26
Recipes published as research. This site's homebrew section publishes batches with their measurements attached rather than as recipes alone, which is the practice the gap below says the field otherwise lacks. The homebrew section · Verified 2026-08-26
Crowdfunded science, as the route this field actually has. Experiment is the largest crowdfunding platform for scientific research: 937 projects and roughly $8.9 million since 2012, a 44% funding success rate, and an average successful budget around $4,000, on an all-or-nothing model with funded projects required to publish results. Indexed here, in Projects rather than Funders, because it is not a funder: it is a mechanism by which the unfunded question below could actually be paid for, at a figure that matches the assay costs involved. Experiment · Verified 2026-08-26
Citizen-science infrastructure. Platforms that connect distributed volunteers to research projects, the model under which homebrewers are the instrument of a funded study rather than its recipients, which is the only shape in which this practice has ever plausibly been fundable. SciStarter · Verified 2026-08-26
The Reliable Mash, translated to homebrew scale. This site's production protocol rewritten for a kettle, with the dose disagreement against the community's shortlist published rather than reconciled, an ongoing scale-translation project whose disagreements are part of the record. The protocol at homebrew scale · mash methods · Verified 2026-08-26
The failure record. This site's troubleshooting page accumulates what goes wrong at homebrew scale and why: stuck runoff, missed conversion, thin body. Negative results, written down, which is the half of the experimental record this field otherwise loses entirely. When it goes wrong · Verified 2026-08-26
The community's own measurement layer. Grain water absorption, PPG and color values, and milled-grain comparisons, generated by practitioners and published by the supply hub, the nearest thing this field has to a shared dataset, and the reason this site's homebrew pages can cite numbers at all. The shop's data · Verified 2026-08-26
The forum malting threads, as a running experiment. The long-running gluten-free malting threads function as an uncontrolled, unfunded, multi-year trial: many operators, many grains, published outcomes, no protocol. Indexed as a project because that is what it behaves like, with its limits stated rather than dressed up. The long-running thread · the gluten-free forum · Verified 2026-08-26
We have found no externally funded research project operating at homebrew scale in this category. That is a documented absence, not an unfinished search.
4. Funders & Programs — who pays for it (described, never endorsed)
Two kinds of entry, and the difference matters. Awarded entries are grants that have actually been paid out for gluten-free malting and brewing research. Open routes are programs whose published scope could cover work documented here but which nobody in this field has applied to that we can find. Described, never endorsed, and never a promise that an application would succeed.
An earlier version of this section said no funder had ever paid for this work. That was wrong. This directory documents the awards below on its own other pages. What is true is narrower: the money has gone to universities, not to practitioners, and we have found no grant awarded to a homebrewer or home maltster for work at their own scale.
— Awarded: gluten-free malting and brewing research that has been funded —
University of Nevada, Reno — malting and brewing sorghum. A three-year, $150,000 Nevada Agricultural Experiment Station award to Melinda Yerka and John Baggett, inside roughly $650,000 supporting the wider sorghum breeding program. It investigates malting technique and brewing process for local breweries, with gluten-free demand named as the motivation, which is this page's own subject matter, funded. The grant · traditional fermentation · Verified 2026-08-26
Penn State — gluten-free beer from unmalted grains. A $53,514 award to Darrell Cockburn, part of roughly $300,000 in beer grants across four Penn State researchers, evaluating unmalted gluten-free grains and enzyme supplementation for fermentable sugars and free amino nitrogen. The enzyme-mash route this page's supply section documents, with public money behind it. Grant coverage · yeast and fermentation · Verified 2026-08-26
USDA NIFA — AFRI. The federal competitive program whose plant-products and food-science priority areas reach this research, and the standing route above the individual awards. AFRI · Verified 2026-08-26
— Open routes: scope fits, nobody here has applied —
— Federal programs, for the grower and processor end —
SARE — Farmer/Rancher and Producer Grants. The best fit on this page. SARE funds producers running their own on-farm trials: roughly $15,000 for an individual and up to $30,000–$35,000 for teams or larger regional awards, depending on region. It has already funded value-added work on teff, one of this directory's own grains. A grower trialling malting sorghum or millet for the gluten-free market is squarely inside the published scope. SARE grants · North Central Farmer/Rancher · Southern Producer Grants · Western Farmer/Rancher · Verified 2026-08-26
USDA Value-Added Producer Grants. Up to $75,000 for planning and $250,000 for working capital, for producers and producer cooperatives adding value to a raw commodity. Malting your own grain is the textbook definition of adding value to it, and partnerships are prioritised. Scale suits a small malthouse rather than a kitchen. The program · Verified 2026-08-26
USDA NIFA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR). Phase I awards of up to $175,000 for research and development, plus up to $6,500 for technical assistance such as a feasibility or marketing study. Aimed at food, agriculture and rural innovation carried out by small businesses, the route for a small maltster or gluten-free brewery rather than an individual homebrewer. USDA SBIR · Verified 2026-08-26
Cooperative Extension, and the precedent that matters most here. The National Center for Home Food Preservation was, in its own words, "established with funding from the Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (CSREES-USDA)" to "address food safety concerns for those who practice and teach home food preservation and processing methods." That is federal money for a home-scale food process, on safety grounds. Home malting is the same shape of problem, and unlike home canning, its output goes disproportionately to people with a diagnosed medical condition. If any public money is ever going to reach this practice, this is the door. NCHFP · Verified 2026-08-26
— A closed door, named so nobody wastes an application on it —
USDA Specialty Crop Block Grants do not cover these grains. The Specialty Crops Competitiveness Act defines specialty crops as fruits and vegetables, tree nuts, dried fruits, horticulture and nursery crops. Grains are excluded, and sorghum appears on USDA's ineligible list. Hops, oddly, is a specialty crop. So the most visible agricultural grant program in the country is open to your hops and closed to your base malt. What is a specialty crop · Verified 2026-08-26
— Routes sized for an actual practitioner —
Crowdfunded science. The largest scientific crowdfunding platform reports 937 projects and roughly $8.9 million since 2012, a 44% success rate, and an average successful budget near $4,000, on an all-or-nothing model with funded projects required to publish results. That figure is the same order as a batch of mail-in assays, which makes it the only route on this page sized to the specific study this page says is missing. Experiment · Verified 2026-08-26
Citizen-science infrastructure. Platforms matching distributed volunteers to research projects. The model here is homebrewers as the instrument of a funded study rather than its recipients, which is the shape in which many-small-batches work becomes fundable at all. SciStarter · Verified 2026-08-26
Micro-grants. Small no-strings community grants, typically around $1,000, awarded monthly by local chapters for projects of any kind. Too small for a research program, correctly sized for a shared grain mill, a controlled kiln build, or a round of assays. The Awesome Foundation · Verified 2026-08-26
— Education and training funding —
Not research money, but the most reliably available funding a person in this field can actually get.
The Michael James Jackson Foundation for Brewing & Distilling. Technical-education scholarships for people from underrepresented backgrounds in brewing and distilling. Scholarships · Verified 2026-08-26
Master Brewers Association of the Americas scholarships. National scholarships covering tuition for recognized brewing courses, with multiple application windows through the year. MBAA scholarships · Verified 2026-08-26
American Society of Brewing Chemists Foundation. Graduate scholarships for students pursuing brewing-science research degrees, the route by which an academic version of this page's open questions would get a person paid to work on them. ASBC · Verified 2026-08-26
— What is still genuinely absent —
No brewing body, patient organization or agricultural funder that we have found runs a program aimed at gluten-free brewing specifically. Every route above is general-purpose and would have to be argued into. That remains the honest finding, and it is a smaller and more useful finding than "there is no money."
5. Supply, Equipment & Methods — the home bench: where a homebrewer buys, and what they actually run
— Where the grain comes from —
The dedicated gluten-free homebrew supply hub. The one retailer we have found built specifically for this category, carrying grain, enzymes, and the tutorials that teach their use, alongside community-generated measurements — grain water absorption, PPG and color values, and milled-grain comparisons — that our homebrew section draws on. The shop · Verified 2026-08-26
The dedicated maltsters' own channels. The malthouses documented across the grain directories sell to small brewers; sourcing and verification live on this site's working pages. Malthouses that run gluten-free · where to get sorghum malt · Verified 2026-08-26
— The enzyme shelf —
The external-enzyme families a homebrewer can actually buy. Ceremix Flex and Ondea Pro reach homebrew shelves, which is the same external-enzyme approach this site's protocols teach and the enzymes wing documents. The shop · Verified 2026-08-26
The club's working enzyme shortlist. Termamyl, Ondea Pro, Fungamyl 800L, AMG 300L and SEBAmyl, the wiki's maintained reference, arrived at independently of this site's production protocols. The wiki's reference · Verified 2026-08-26
— Diastatic power, as the community measures it —
These are the club's published figures, not ours. They are the clearest quantitative answer we have found to why gluten-free brewing needs exogenous enzymes at all, and they come from a practitioner wiki rather than a journal.
Malted sorghum sits at roughly one-eighth of barley's diastatic power. The club's reference gives barley malt at 418 °WK and malted sorghum at 54 °WK. That single comparison explains the entire enzyme shelf above: it is not that sorghum converts badly, it is that it brings roughly an eighth of the enzyme load a brewer coming from barley assumes. The wiki's reference · Verified 2026-08-26
Rice malt is listed far higher than sorghum — 231 °WK. The same reference puts rice malt above four times malted sorghum, and above sweet potato at 207 °WK (63.7 °Lintner). Worth flagging because this directory's flavor page treats rice as the deliberately neutral grain. Neutral in flavor turns out not to mean inert in enzymes. The wiki's reference · Verified 2026-08-26
Millet is the club's pick for highest endogenous diastatic power. In the wiki's words, "between millet, sorghum, rice and buckwheat, millet appears to have the highest endogenous (naturally occurring) diastatic power." Recorded as the club's assessment; note it sits alongside the figures above rather than being derived from them, and we have not found a published measurement series behind it. The wiki's reference · Verified 2026-08-26
The community's published enzyme doses, per pound of grain. Ondea Pro at 0.5–1 ml/lb, Ceremix Flex at 1.0–1.5 ml/lb, Termamyl L at 0.5–1 ml/lb, SEBAmyl L at 0.5–1 ml/lb, with Ondea Pro plus Ceremix Flex described as the club's staple pairing since early 2020. Described, never recommended: this site's own protocols run different doses and publish the disagreement rather than resolving it. The wiki's reference · Verified 2026-08-26
Germination time as a diastatic-power lever. The one practitioner publishing millet parameters reports that longer germination — across a two-to-six-day range — may raise diastatic power. A home maltster's most accessible variable, pointed at the number that matters most. Brewing with millet · Verified 2026-08-26
Warmer and shorter, for millet and buckwheat. The craft-brewing press reports these grains generally want warmer germination temperatures and less time than barley, which is the direction the academic germination-temperature work also points, arrived at independently. Craft Beer & Brewing on gluten-free craft malt · Verified 2026-08-26
— Home malting, as a procedure —
The five-stage home-malting method. Steep, germinate, kiln and the rest, with temperature tables and per-grain procedures for millet, buckwheat, maize, rice and sorghum. The closest thing this field has to a standard method. Advanced malting tutorial · Verified 2026-08-26
The community's own malting methods. Working forum threads for sorghum and millet where practitioners trade procedures directly, including a method written explicitly for simplicity over yield. An easy sorghum/millet method · the long-running malting thread · Verified 2026-08-26
The acceptance and safety gates a home maltster should not skip. This site's malting stack, including what separates malting-grade sorghum from feed-grade. The full malting stack · what makes good malting sorghum · Verified 2026-08-26
— What the malting literature says a home maltster controls —
Germination temperature is the lever, and it has been measured. Chiba, Bryce and Goodfellow examined how germination temperature governs proteolysis in sorghum and millet through malting and mashing. Protein breakdown is what releases free amino nitrogen, the precursor this directory's flavor page identifies as the aroma bottleneck. So the home maltster's thermostat is upstream of the finished beer's ester profile, which is not how home-malting guides usually frame it. PubMed 22440185 · Verified 2026-08-26
Malting conditions, systematically varied. Hassani, Zarnkow and Becker at Weihenstephan varied malting conditions for sorghum as a raw material for fermented beverages, the controlled version of what forum threads arrive at by trial. PubMed 23751551 · Verified 2026-08-26
Oat and buckwheat malt, characterized. Salamon and colleagues characterized buckwheat malt grains for fermented food production. Note for readers of this site: buckwheat is in scope here; oats are excluded under this site's grain rules regardless of what the paper covers. PubMed 37893639 · Verified 2026-08-26
— The home-malting bench, from outside this site —
Figures below are the general malting practice the homebrew press publishes, developed on barley. The gluten-free per-grain procedures differ and live in the Lavery tutorial indexed above; both are recorded so a reader can see where the borrowed numbers come from.
Four stages, and only one specialized tool. Steeping, germination, drying and kilning. The homebrew press's own assessment is that the only genuinely specialized piece of equipment a home maltster needs is a food dehydrator — which is why this practice is possible in a kitchen at all. BYO on home malting · Verified 2026-08-26
Steeping, as a moisture target rather than a soak. The published approach moves grain from its storage moisture to the level germination requires using several short wet steeps of 4–6 hours with air rests between them, rather than one long immersion. Air rests are held cool. The point is that steeping is a controlled hydration curve, not a bucket of water and a wait. BYO on home malting · Verified 2026-08-26
Keeping the steep aerobic. A modified storage container fitted for aquarium air hoses lets a home maltster bubble air through the steep and push humidified air through the air rests and germination, the documented DIY answer to the one thing commercial steeping vessels do that a bucket does not. BYO on home malting · Verified 2026-08-26
Germination, and why turning matters. Held warm and humid, with the grain turned regularly. Turning is not tidiness: it detangles rootlets that otherwise grow into clumps, and disperses the heat and carbon dioxide the grain's own respiration produces. A clumped, unturned bed is a hot, wet, still mass, which is the condition the safety literature below is about. BYO on home malting · Verified 2026-08-26
Knowing when germination is done. The published field test is that rootlets reach roughly the length of the grain — a judgement a home maltster can make by eye, with no instrument. BYO on home malting · Verified 2026-08-26
Drying and kilning, as a moisture endpoint. The published guidance takes drying through a dehydrator over several hours at a low grain-bed temperature, then raises the temperature for the kilning stage. The number that matters is the endpoint: the grain spoils if kilning has not brought moisture down to roughly 3–5%. BYO on home malting · Verified 2026-08-26
A controlled kiln, built rather than bought. Documented DIY malt-kiln builds pair a heat source with a temperature controller and logging, so a kilning schedule can be held and recorded instead of estimated, which is also what makes a batch comparable to the next one. A documented kiln build · Verified 2026-08-26
Trays at small scale, a cabinet at larger scale. The published progression is baking trays for a small batch, and a purpose-built cabinet with trays, heating and a blower once volume outgrows them. BYO on home malting · Verified 2026-08-26
— The safety literature a home maltster should read first —
Fungi and mycotoxins in sorghum-based traditional malt, wort and beer. Nkwe, Taylor and Siame documented aflatoxins, fumonisin B1 and zearalenone contaminating sorghum malt and the beer made from it. Home malting deliberately creates warm, moist, germinating grain held for days, which is also the ideal condition for fungal growth, and no home-malting guide we have found mentions this. PubMed 16170615 · Verified 2026-08-26
What malting does to the toxins already present. Habler and colleagues traced the fate of Fusarium toxins through the malting process. The steep water, the germination bed and the kiln each move these compounds rather than simply removing them. PubMed 26813702 · Verified 2026-08-26
And what survives into the finished beer. Prusova and colleagues followed free and conjugated Alternaria and Fusarium mycotoxins through malt production and double-mash brewing. PubMed 34474284 · Verified 2026-08-26
The incoming grain is where the risk starts. Kaela, Lilly and Rheeder surveyed mycotoxins in sorghum and pearl millet from smallholder production, the same two grains at the center of gluten-free home malting, and the survey found multiple toxins. PubMed 37014446 · Verified 2026-08-26
Mycotoxins in traditionally brewed beer, measured. Odhav and Naicker in South Africa, and Adekoya and colleagues on maize-based opaque beer, two independent confirmations that the risk reaches the glass in practice, not only in theory. PubMed 11811766 · PubMed 29453120 · Verified 2026-08-26
— What this mash demands of a rig —
Five capabilities, from this site's own equipment analysis. A gluten-free enzyme mash is not a barley mash with different grain; it asks for things a standard homebrew setup was never built to do.
Tight temperature control, ±1°F or better. Enzymes work in windows, and the conversion holds decide the sugar profile. Without it: drifting holds, inconsistent attenuation, and batches that cannot be compared with each other, which is fatal to a field whose only research method is comparing batches. Equipment for the process · Verified 2026-08-26
Recirculation or continuous stirring. Sorghum starch thickens and settles; the liquefaction hold needs movement throughout. Without it: scorching, uneven conversion, stuck runoff. Equipment for the process · Verified 2026-08-26
Comfortable operation at 190°F and above. The liquefaction hold sits near boiling, for an hour, a duty cycle that finds the limits of elements and vessels chosen for a 152°F barley mash. Equipment for the process · Verified 2026-08-26
Controlled cooling, because the coolback is a calculated dilution. Dropping from the liquefaction hold to the conversion hold is not waiting: what you cool with decides how much water lands in the mash. This site's own analysis calls it the row homebrewers plan last and regret first. The coolback · Verified 2026-08-26
A workable runoff path for a huskless grist. Sorghum and millet bring no husk, so there is no filter bed unless you build one. Stuck mash, lautering and filtration · Verified 2026-08-26
— The rigs that deliver them —
Recirculating single-vessel electric systems. The all-in-one class — pump, PID controller, false bottom — meets all five requirements, which is why it has become the default for serious gluten-free homebrewing. Recorded here as a class, never as a product endorsement. Equipment for the process · Verified 2026-08-26
Brew-in-a-bag. The runoff problem largely disappears and the bag handles the huskless grist directly, the single cheapest answer to this category's hardest mechanical problem. Heat and stirring for the liquefaction are still on you. Equipment for the process · teff directory · Verified 2026-08-26
Cooler mash tuns, with adjustments. Fine for conversion holds, hard for the high-temperature liquefaction and impossible to stir continuously. The documented workaround is a hotter strike and hard insulation, accepting less control. Equipment for the process · Verified 2026-08-26
Kettle plus manual stirring. Entirely workable at five gallons if you are willing to stand there; scorching on direct fire is the real risk. Equipment for the process · Verified 2026-08-26
— Runoff, and the husk that is not there —
Rice hulls as a filter medium. Gluten-free, inert, and the standard answer to building a filter bed a huskless grist cannot form on its own. Stuck mash and filtration · brewing key differences · Verified 2026-08-26
Crush profile for huskless grain. Sorghum and millet mill differently from barley, so a mill set for barley is set wrong, before any cross-contact question arises. Crush profile · Verified 2026-08-26
— Cross-contact: the equipment risk hierarchy —
This is the equipment problem unique to brewing gluten-free on a shared home setup, ordered worst first from this site's own analysis.
The grain mill, worst by a distance. A mill that has crushed barley holds flour in its rollers, hopper, adjustment threads and body: dry, fine, static-prone dust in a machine built out of crevices, and it is the first thing gluten-free grain touches. It cannot be washed: water and mill rollers do not mix. The documented options are a second mill, milling elsewhere, or milling gluten-free first and accepting reduced rather than removed risk. Shared equipment and cross-contact · Verified 2026-08-26
Plastic, and anything scratched. Buckets, fermenters, tubing, spigots, bottling wands. Scratches hold residue a sponge does not reach, and every scrub adds more. Cheap to duplicate rather than clean, tubing and spigots especially, being least visible and most awkward to inspect. Shared equipment and cross-contact · Verified 2026-08-26
Crevices in otherwise good equipment. False bottoms, braided manifolds, pump heads, plate chillers, ball valves that do not come apart. Stainless is not the problem; the geometry is. If you cannot disassemble it to see inside, you cannot verify it. Shared equipment and cross-contact · Verified 2026-08-26
Wood and soft goods. Spoons, paddles, brushes, grain bags, towels. Porous or fibrous, all of it inexpensive, and the documented answer is replacement rather than cleaning. Shared equipment and cross-contact · Verified 2026-08-26
Smooth stainless and glass — the good news. Kettles, stainless fermenters, carboys, one-piece spoons and thermometers. Non-porous, inspectable, no crevices; here "cleaned it well" genuinely is the answer. Shared equipment and cross-contact · Verified 2026-08-26
Kegs, lines and taps. The dispense side, which is downstream of every precaution taken in the brewhouse and easy to forget. Shared equipment and cross-contact · Verified 2026-08-26
What testing can and cannot tell you at home scale. This site's working page on the limits of a home gluten test, indexed here because the celiac and testing pages document why a negative reading on a fermented product is weaker evidence than it appears. Shared equipment and cross-contact · testing and certification · Verified 2026-08-26
— Mashing at home scale —
The standard mash and the documented methods. Four documented methods and the standard mash, written for kettle scale rather than scaled down from production. The homebrew section · Verified 2026-08-26
Where the home doses and the production doses disagree. This site's production protocols and the club's shortlist agree on which enzymes; they do not agree on how much. The honest comparison is published rather than reconciled. The Reliable Mash at homebrew scale · Verified 2026-08-26
6. Standards & Events — the field's baselines and its calendar
What qualifies: a published baseline a home brewer or maltster can brew against, or a recurring event where this practice is judged or taught.
This practice has no calendar and no baseline of its own. What it has is the general homebrew field's, which is worth indexing precisely because a gluten-free brewer has nowhere else to go.
— Standards —
BJCP 2021 Category 31A — Alternative Grain Beer. The one published standard we have found that draws this site's distinction and enforces it in judging. Its entry instructions state that "Gluten-free (GF) beers made from completely gluten-free ingredients may be entered here, while GF beers using process-based gluten removal should be entered in their respective base style categories." A gluten-removed beer is judged as the barley beer it is. The entrant must also specify the alternative grain used, which makes the grain part of the entry record. Category 31A · category 31 · Verified 2026-08-26
Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP). The style guidelines and judge certification that competitions run against. Gluten-free entries are judged by the same guidelines as everything else, which means a sorghum beer is assessed against descriptors developed on barley beer, the same borrowed-frame problem this directory documents for flavor vocabulary. BJCP · Verified 2026-08-26
This site's malting acceptance gates. The nearest published quality and safety baseline for gluten-free home malting that we have found, and it is ours. No community body maintains one, which is recorded as a gap below rather than counted here as an external standard. What makes good malting sorghum · Verified 2026-08-26
— Events —
Learn to Homebrew Day. The American Homebrewers Association's annual teaching event — the field's one recurring occasion aimed at bringing new people into the practice. AHA · Verified 2026-08-26
Homebrew Con. The AHA's annual conference, with an open call for presentations — the venue where a gluten-free home maltster would present findings if they had any to present. AHA · Verified 2026-08-26
AHA National Homebrew Competition. The field's largest competition, judged to the BJCP 2021 beer guidelines, which means a gluten-free entry is routed by 31A's rule above rather than by a dedicated gluten-free category. We checked the competition's own entry pages and found no separate gluten-free division. The competition · Verified 2026-08-26
AHA/BJCP sanctioned competition program. The standing circuit of sanctioned competitions, judged to the same guidelines. The program · Verified 2026-08-26
BJCP-sanctioned competitions. The general competition circuit, which is where gluten-free entries are judged when they are judged at all. BJCP · Verified 2026-08-26
Dedicated gluten-free categories exist — at the commercial level, and homebrewers cannot enter them. The Great American Beer Festival lists three gluten-free categories rather than one: Classic Gluten-Free Ale or Lager, Hoppy Gluten-Free Beer, and Specialty Gluten-Free Beer. Category 26's definition states verbatim that "All ingredients must be free of gluten. Within the framework of these guidelines, beers brewed with barley, wheat, spelt, rye, and other gluten-containing ingredients may not be categorized as Gluten-Free." GABF and the World Beer Cup require entrants to be licensed commercial breweries; homebrew competitions run separately under BJCP guidelines. Our competitions page · Verified 2026-08-26
HomebrewCon, as a venue this field has actually used. The Zero Tolerance club has presented gluten-free homebrewing at the AHA's national conference, the practice speaking inside homebrewing's biggest room, rather than waiting for a room of its own. Homebrewers & home maltsters · Homebrew Con · Verified 2026-08-26
What remains absent is an event or competition category dedicated to gluten-free brewing at homebrew scale. The dedicated categories are commercial and closed to this page's readers; the rooms open to them are the general field's.
7. Literature & Resources — the field's written record
— The book —
Keifer, Gluten-Free Brewing (Brewers Publications, 2022). The category's book: ingredients, sourcing, process, and thirty-plus tested recipes, per the publisher. Publisher page · Verified 2026-08-26
— The maintained references —
The Zero Tolerance wiki. The club's maintained knowledge base for new and experienced gluten-free brewers — the field's only structured reference that is neither a book nor a shop page. Announced here · Verified 2026-08-26
The supplier tutorials. Step-by-step extract, partial-mash and all-grain guidance, organized by skill level. Tutorials · Verified 2026-08-26
— The home-malting shelf —
The Lavery tutorial. The field's most complete home-malting guide: five stages, temperature tables, and per-grain procedures. Advanced malting tutorial · Verified 2026-08-26
The homebrew press on malting and gluten-free technique. Brew Your Own's home-malting techniques piece and its gluten-free brewing primer, and Craft Beer & Brewing on gluten-free craft malt, evidence that the general homebrew press does cover this field, if thinly. BYO on home malting · BYO on gluten-free brewing · Craft Beer & Brewing on GF craft malt · Verified 2026-08-26
The community's malting methods, in the forum record. Working home-malting threads for sorghum and millet. An easy sorghum/millet method · the long-running malting thread · Verified 2026-08-26
— The peer-reviewed layer this practice rarely cites —
Chiba, Bryce & Goodfellow (2012), Effect of germination temperatures on proteolysis of the gluten-free grains sorghum and millet during malting and mashing. J Agric Food Chem 60(14):3745–3753. PubMed 22440185 · Verified 2026-08-26
Hassani, Zarnkow & Becker (2014), Influence of malting conditions on sorghum as a raw material for fermented beverages. Food Sci Technol Int 20(6):453–463. PubMed 23751551 · Verified 2026-08-26
Nkwe, Taylor & Siame (2005), Fungi, aflatoxins, fumonisin B1 and zearalenone contaminating sorghum-based traditional malt, wort and beer. Mycopathologia 160(2):177–186. The paper this page argues belongs in every home-malting guide and appears in none. PubMed 16170615 · Verified 2026-08-26
Habler, Hofer, Geißinger et al. (2016), Fate of Fusarium Toxins during the Malting Process. J Agric Food Chem 64(6):1377–1384. PubMed 26813702 · Verified 2026-08-26
Kaela, Lilly & Rheeder (2023), Mycological and Multiple Mycotoxin Surveillance of Sorghum and Pearl Millet Produced by Smallholder Farmers. Curr Microbiol 80(5):164. PubMed 37014446 · Verified 2026-08-26
Salamon, Kowalska & Ignaczak (2023), Characteristics of Oat and Buckwheat Malt Grains for Use in the Production of Fermented Foods. Foods 12(20):3747. PubMed 37893639 · Verified 2026-08-26
— Practitioner process data, published —
Scott Janish, Brewing with millet. Germination and kilning parameters for millet, published openly by a practitioner. The format this field needs more of: what was done, at what temperature, for how long. Brewing with millet · Verified 2026-08-26
The AHA's account of the first gluten-free homebrew club. How this practice organized itself, from the national body's own coverage. The AHA's account · Verified 2026-08-26
— Competition standards, and who may enter them —
Competitions with gluten-free categories. This site's working list of where a gluten-free beer can be entered, with the GABF category definitions quoted verbatim and the eligibility limits stated, the practical companion to the BJCP rule indexed above. Competitions with gluten-free categories · Verified 2026-08-26
Brewers Association beer style guidelines. The source document behind the GABF gluten-free category definitions, revised annually. Via our competitions page · Verified 2026-08-26
— Mycotoxins, the wider evidence base —
Odhav & Naicker (2002), Mycotoxins in South African traditionally brewed beers. Food Addit Contam 19(1):55–61. PubMed 11811766 · Verified 2026-08-26
Adekoya, Obadina, Adaku et al. (2018), Mycobiota and co-occurrence of mycotoxins in South African maize-based opaque beer. Int J Food Microbiol 270:22–30. PubMed 29453120 · Verified 2026-08-26
Prusova, Dzuman, Jelinek et al. (2022), Free and conjugated Alternaria and Fusarium mycotoxins during Pilsner malt production and double-mash brewing. Food Chem 369:130926. PubMed 34474284 · Verified 2026-08-26
— General references —
BJCP 2021 Beer Style Guidelines, Category 31: Alternative Fermentables Beer. The standards document that governs how a gluten-free entry is judged, and where the gluten-free / gluten-removed split is written down. Category 31 · 31A · Verified 2026-08-26
Gluten-free beer — general reference. A maintained encyclopaedia overview of the category, useful as an orientation layer rather than as evidence, and listed with that limit stated. The article · Verified 2026-08-26
— This site's own practitioner record —
The equipment stack. What the mash demands, the rig classes that deliver it, and the coolback analysis. Equipment for the process · Verified 2026-08-26
The cross-contact stack. The risk hierarchy, the order to do things in, and what testing can and cannot settle. Shared equipment and cross-contact · Verified 2026-08-26
The process stack for huskless grain. Crush profile, and stuck-mash and filtration survival. Crush profile · stuck mash and filtration · Verified 2026-08-26
The starting points. A first batch, the mash methods, and sourcing the ingredients. Your first batch · mash methods · sourcing the ingredients · Verified 2026-08-26
The malting stack. Including the acceptance and safety gates home maltsters should not skip. Malting overview · what makes good malting sorghum · Verified 2026-08-26
The homebrew stack. The standard mash, four documented methods, and recipes published as research. The homebrew section · research asks any kettle can run · Verified 2026-08-26
How the field connects — documented links between the entries above
A homebrewer's gluten-free beer has no category of its own; the same beer brewed commercially has three. GABF lists Classic, Hoppy and Specialty gluten-free categories, and requires entrants to be licensed commercial breweries. Homebrew competitions run under BJCP, where the same beer goes into a general alternative-grain category. The segment is taken seriously enough for three commercial categories and not yet seriously enough for one homebrew category, in a field where, as this page's Institutions section records, the homebrewers are the research layer. Our competitions page · BJCP 31A
Three independent bodies drew the same line, for three different reasons. The Brewers Association excludes enzyme-treated barley beer from its gluten-free categories on style grounds. BJCP routes process-removed beers to their base style on the same reasoning. TTB separates the claims on labeling grounds, and celiac organizations draw it on safety grounds. Four institutions, four rationales, one boundary, which is a stronger form of agreement than four bodies citing each other. Our competitions page · gluten-reduced beer is not gluten-free
The practitioner-to-professional path runs through this page. The author of the category's only book learned the craft as a homebrewer because the shelves had nothing for him, joined the club indexed in Section 1, and co-founded a dedicated gluten-free brewery. That is the field's pipeline in one biography, and it is the strongest argument for why an unfunded hobby deserves a research directory entry at all. The book, at the publisher · homebrewers & home maltsters
The one practitioner publishing process numbers is publishing exactly what the academics measure. Janish's millet write-up documents germination and kilning parameters. Chiba's group measured germination temperature against proteolysis; Hassani's varied malting conditions systematically. Same variables, same grains, two audiences, no shared venue: the institutional gap in Section 1, visible at the level of a single measurement. Brewing with millet · the germination study
Breakthrough: a judging body already separates gluten-free from gluten-removed, and did it for style reasons. BJCP 31A sends beers made from gluten-free ingredients to Alternative Grain Beer, and sends process-removed beers back to their base style. A gluten-removed pale ale is judged as a pale ale, because that is what it is. This site argues the same split on safety grounds and the survey evidence argues it on consumer grounds. The BJCP arrived there independently, on style integrity, and wrote it into the rules practitioners actually compete under. Category 31A · gluten-reduced beer is not gluten-free
The competition record is a dataset nobody is reading. Every 31A entry names its alternative grain, and every entry receives scored sensory feedback from certified judges. That is structured, repeated, grain-labeled sensory data on gluten-free beer, generated annually and never aggregated. This directory's flavor page records that gluten-free grains have almost no controlled sensory data; some of it has been sitting in competition score sheets the whole time. Category 31A · the competition
The home-malting guides already name the failure mode; they just do not name what it costs. The published guidance is explicit that grain spoils if kilning does not bring moisture down to roughly 3–5%, and equally explicit that germination beds must be turned to disperse heat and carbon dioxide and prevent clumping. Both instructions exist to prevent exactly the warm, wet, still conditions the mycotoxin literature measures. Two bodies of knowledge describing one hazard, and neither cites the other. BYO on home malting · the sorghum malt survey
The money exists, and some of it has already been spent — just not here. Two US universities hold awards aimed squarely at gluten-free malting and brewing: $150,000 at Nevada for malting technique and brewing process, $53,514 at Penn State for unmalted-grain conversion. Meanwhile this page carries seven further programs whose scope could cover practitioner work and which nobody in this field has applied to. The distinction that matters is not funded versus unfunded. It is that every dollar found so far went to an institution, and the entry requirement for most of the remaining routes is a producer or small business willing to write an application. SARE grants · research asks
The most visible farm grant in the country is open to hops and closed to sorghum. USDA Specialty Crop Block Grants exclude cereal grains, and sorghum is on the ineligible list, while hops qualifies as a specialty crop. A gluten-free brewer's bittering agent is fundable and their base malt is not, an accident of a 2004 statutory definition that shapes which half of this category can attract agricultural money. What is a specialty crop
Federal money already reaches home-scale food processing, on safety grounds. The National Center for Home Food Preservation was established with USDA extension funding to address food safety for people practicing home food preservation. Home malting is the same category of problem, a home process with a microbiological failure mode, with an added argument home canning cannot make: its output goes disproportionately to drinkers with a diagnosed medical condition. The precedent for funding this practice's safety work already exists under another name. NCHFP · the mycotoxin literature
Funding scale and question scale finally match somewhere. Most programs on this page are sized for a farm or a small business, not a kitchen. Two are not: crowdfunded science at roughly $4,000 average, and micro-grants at around $1,000. Those are the sizes of a round of assays and a shared kiln build respectively, which is to say, the exact two things this page's gaps say are missing. Experiment · the Awesome Foundation
The unfunded question has a price, and it is about $4,000. The average successfully crowdfunded science project on the largest such platform sits near $4,000, with a 44% success rate and a requirement to publish results. That is the same order as a batch of mail-in mycotoxin assays. This page records a field with no funder; it should equally record that the specific study it is missing costs roughly what a community of practitioners could raise between them. Experiment · research asks
The grain mill is the one piece of equipment with two independent reasons to dedicate it. It is the worst cross-contact offender on a shared setup: dry barley flour held in crevices, first thing the gluten-free grain touches, and unwashable. It is also set wrong for huskless grain, because sorghum and millet mill differently from barley. A brewer weighing whether a second mill is worth it is usually counting only the first reason. Shared equipment and cross-contact · crush profile
Brew-in-a-bag answers this category's hardest mechanical problem for about the price of a bag. Huskless grain forms no filter bed, which is the origin of the stuck-runoff problem across this whole directory. A bag replaces the lauter bed entirely. The cheapest item in the equipment section solves the failure the expensive systems are designed around. Equipment for the process · stuck mash and filtration
Equipment, not knowledge, is this field's real barrier. The five capabilities a gluten-free enzyme mash demands — tight control, recirculation, sustained high-temperature operation, controlled coolback, a workable runoff path — describe a rig, not a skill. The methods are published and free; the means to execute them are not. That is a different kind of gap from the ones this directory usually records, and it is why the borrowed calendar and the absent funder matter more here than they would elsewhere. Equipment for the process
Breakthrough: home malting recreates the exact conditions the mycotoxin literature warns about. Steeping and germination hold grain warm, wet and undisturbed for days. That is the definition of home malting and it is also the definition of a fungal growth substrate. Nkwe's group found aflatoxins, fumonisin B1 and zearalenone in sorghum-based traditional malt, wort and beer; Kaela's found multiple mycotoxins in smallholder sorghum and pearl millet, the two grains at the center of this practice. A commercial maltster manages this with incoming testing, airflow and kiln control. A home maltster manages it with a tray and optimism. The sorghum malt survey · the grain survey · malting acceptance gates
Breakthrough: malting moves mycotoxins rather than removing them. Habler's group traced Fusarium toxins through the malting process, and Prusova's followed free and conjugated toxins through malt production into the finished beer. The intuition that steeping washes contamination away, or that kilning burns it off, is not what the measurements show. Fate during malting · through to the beer
Breakthrough: the enzyme problem has a number, and it is one-eighth. The club's published figures put barley malt at 418 °WK against malted sorghum's 54 °WK. Every enzyme entry on this page, this site's whole enzyme-mash doctrine, and the koji and external-enzyme wings of this directory all exist to close that one gap. It is the most useful single number a new gluten-free brewer could be handed, and it is sitting on a homebrew club's wiki rather than in a textbook. The wiki's reference · the enzymes wing
Rice is neutral in flavor and not neutral in enzymes. This directory's flavor page indexes rice as the deliberately characterless grain, sold for dryness without flavor, color or haze. The club's diastatic figures put rice malt at 231 °WK, more than four times malted sorghum. A grain treated as an inert filler on one page is carrying meaningful conversion power on another, and nobody appears to be using it that way. The wiki's reference · flavor and texture
Two communities reached the same germination advice from opposite ends. The craft press tells home maltsters that millet and buckwheat want warmer, shorter germination than barley. Heriot-Watt measured germination temperature against proteolysis in sorghum and millet. Practice and laboratory agree on direction, cite each other never, and only one of them publishes numbers. Craft Beer & Brewing · the germination study
Breakthrough: germination temperature is a flavor control, not just a conversion control. Chiba's group at Heriot-Watt showed germination temperature governs proteolysis in sorghum and millet. Proteolysis sets free amino nitrogen; free amino nitrogen is the ester precursor this directory identifies as the aroma bottleneck in gluten-free beer. The home maltster's thermostat therefore reaches all the way to the finished beer's aroma, a lever the practice already has its hands on without usually knowing what it is connected to. The study · the aroma gap
Unexplored, and squarely in this field's reach: nobody has published mycotoxin measurements from home-malted gluten-free grain. The commercial and traditional literature exists. The home-malting guides do not cite it, and we have found no measurements taken from a home malting batch at all, not one steep, not one germination bed. This is a research ask that needs a mail-in assay and a few practitioners, and it sits inside the one thing this field is actually good at: running many small batches and writing down what happened. It is also the rare open question here where the answer could matter medically, because the people drinking this beer are the people least able to absorb a bad batch. Searched 2026-08-26; recorded as a documented absence. Research asks · the traditional-beer measurements
The people this beer is for are the people least protected by guesswork. The safety literature above was written about traditional and commercial production. Home malting has no incoming grain specification, no lab, and no regulator, and its output goes disproportionately to drinkers with a diagnosed medical condition. That combination is worth stating plainly once on this page. Celiac and health · malting acceptance gates
The academic malting literature and the forum record never meet. Weihenstephan and Heriot-Watt have both published controlled malting-parameter work on exactly these grains. The community's home-malting method threads arrive at similar procedures empirically and cite none of it. Neither side is wrong; they simply have no shared venue, which is the same institutional gap this page's Section 1 records. Weihenstephan · Heriot-Watt
The supply shop stocks the site's enzyme families. Ceremix Flex and Ondea Pro on a homebrew shelf are the same external-enzyme approach our protocols teach and the enzymes wing documents: the practitioner supply chain and the site's process doctrine already agree. The shop
The community converged on our production enzyme toolkit, independently. The club wiki's enzyme reference and this site's production protocols arrive at the same working shortlist: Termamyl, Ondea Pro, Fungamyl 800L, AMG 300L, SEBAmyl, with nobody coordinating it. Doses differ, sometimes by a lot; the honest comparison lives on The Reliable Mash at homebrew scale. Independent convergence is decent evidence the shortlist is right. The wiki's reference
A retailer is doing an institution's job. The tutorials, the hosted malting guide, the recipe library and the community measurements all sit with a shop. That is what happens to a field with no university program, no trade association and no funder: its written record accumulates wherever someone has a reason to host it. The shop · Brewers Publications
Sections 3 and 4 are nearly empty, and that is the finding. No funder, and no externally funded project at this scale. Every other page in this directory can name who paid; this one cannot. It explains the unmeasured experimental record below more directly than any observation about practitioner habits would. Research asks
Research gaps — where the field's coverage runs out
These are the gaps we have found and documented, if we have missed something, tell us:
Home malting has materials but no home. The knowledge exists: a hosted tutorial, magazine techniques pieces, working forum threads, the malting chapters of the category's book, but it is scattered across sites, and we have found no organized home-malting community, no curated collection, and no shared quality or safety baseline. This site's malting section carries the acceptance and safety gates; we have found no community practicing against them.
And the calendar it borrows is not built for it. Learn to Homebrew Day, Homebrew Con and the BJCP competition circuit are all real and all general. A gluten-free brewer attends the field's events as a guest of a practice built on barley, judged against guidelines written for barley beer. That is not a complaint about those bodies; it is the reason this page's Standards and Events section had to be filled with somebody else's.
The experimental record is unmeasured. The community brews constantly but publishes almost no measurements: gravities, pH, extract, sensory panels. The field's data layer is this site's research asks, written so any kettle can run them; a homebrew batch with honest numbers is a research contribution here.
No recipe database carries provenance. Recipes circulate through the club wiki, the book, and shop pages, but we have found no gluten-free recipe collection that records what was measured when the batch was brewed, the gap our recipes-as-research approach exists to close.
No homebrew competition category means no aggregated sensory record. Commercial gluten-free beers get judged in three dedicated GABF categories and generate scored feedback against gluten-free peers. Homebrewers get judged in a general category against a description written for other grains. The result is that the largest population of gluten-free brewers produces the least comparable sensory data, and we have found no mechanism that would aggregate it even if they produced it. Our competitions page
Practitioner process data exists in single figures. Searching again, the published layer is: one practitioner publishing germination and kilning parameters openly, one hosted malting tutorial with per-grain procedures, and one club wiki carrying comparative diastatic-power figures and enzyme doses. Three sources. Everything else we have found is thread discussion. For a field whose entire claim to a research directory entry is that it runs the experiments, that is close to what a few people can produce between them, and the club wiki's headline comparison carries no published measurement series behind it, so even the best of it is a figure without a method. Brewing with millet
The money goes to universities, not to practitioners. Gluten-free malting and brewing research is funded: a $150,000 Experiment Station award at Nevada for malting technique and brewing process, $53,514 at Penn State for unmalted-grain conversion. What we have not found is a single grant awarded to a homebrewer or home maltster for work at their own scale, or any program that names practitioners as eligible applicants for brewing research.
So the practitioner layer stays self-funded while the academic layer does not, and the two produce different kinds of evidence: controlled studies on a few grains from the universities, and many uncontrolled batches from the homebrewers. Neither substitutes for the other, and only one of them gets paid. The Nevada award · the Penn State award · research asks
Brew or malt gluten-free at home? Entries are added on merit once verified — tell us about it.
This page belongs to the Research Directory family: brief, factual, dated entries; every claim on its linked source or hedged as ours; descriptions never endorsements.