Monitoring of gluten in Czech commercial beers

Abstract

Between 2014 and 2019, a total of 361 commercially available Czech beer samples (103 brands) were analysed for gluten content using a competitive enzyme immunoassay. The gluten levels in different types of beers ranged from < 10 mg L-1 to 3 380.0 mg L-1. The percentage of samples that can claim the gluten-free status (< 20 mg L-1) were in categories gluten-free (99%), radler (84.6%), non-alcoholic beer (44.2%), lager beer group I (16.6%), lager beer group II (16.3%), special beer (25%) and wheat beer (0%). The important finding from this work was that 2 out of 196 beer samples with a gluten-free label contained more gluten than allowed under the guidelines established by the European Union and the Codex Alimentarius Standard. From a consumer point of view, it is also significant that in addition to gluten-free samples, 15.4% of radlers, 55.8% of non-alcoholic beers, 71.4 to 75.5% of all lagers and 66.6% of special beer samples could be labelled as very low gluten (21-100 mg L-1).