Kung Foo is a “Rice Lager” which has prompted some of you to ask, “does this mean it’s Gluten Free?” Here’s a longish answer to a simple question.
What is Foo made from?
Kung Foo is made from rice and malted barley starch sources and finished with a combination of American and European aroma hops to give the beer depth not typically seen in many other Australian light/dry beers.
Since beer made from malted barley is not typically Gluten Free we decided to get a batch tested.
Gluten test results.
The particular batch we had tested came back as having “no detectible gluten”, which means there was less than 5ppm of gluten. To compare, a typical 100% malt beer is around 95 ppm gluten.
But the Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) restricts claims around gluten contents as follows:
Gluten Free – The food must not contain:
(a) detectable gluten; or
(b) oats or oat products; or
(c) cereals containing gluten that have been malted, or products of such cereals.
Low Gluten – The food contains no more than 20 mg gluten/100 g of the food.
What does this mean?
Although no gluten was detected in the test, since Kung Foo contains malted barley it does not meet FSANZ criteria for a Gluten Free product and cannot be described as gluten free.
However, at less than 5ppm (or 0.5mg/100g of beer), Kung Foo easily meets the criteria for Low Gluten products.
Any questions? Please feel free to send us an email as beer@2brothers.com.au