Gluten free beer: the UK guide

Gluten free beer in the UK means one thing by law: no more than 20 parts per million of gluten in the glass. How a beer gets under that line is where the choices start. Some are brewed from grains that never contained gluten. Most of what you will find in a supermarket started life as an ordinary barley lager and had the gluten broken down by an enzyme at the end.

Both types are legal, both are drinkable, and the difference between them matters more to some coeliacs than others. This guide covers the law, both types, where to buy, what pubs will actually have, and the beers worth your money. Behind it sits our directory of 271 gluten free beers from 62 UK breweries, which we maintain and re-check rather than copy from press releases.

The quick version

You want	Start here
A supermarket beer tonight	Peroni Gluten Free or Daura Damm, stocked almost everywhere
Beer with no barley at any stage	Naturally gluten free (NGCI) beers, from dedicated producers such as Greens and AltGrain
A proper craft lager	Our gluten free lager picks, the directory’s biggest style at 39 beers
An IPA that drinks like an IPA	Gluten free IPA guide
No gluten and no alcohol	Gluten free alcohol free options, including Daura 0.0%
To know if your usual lager is safe	The A to Z of brand checks
Everything, in a sortable table	The UK gluten free beer database

What the law actually says

A UK beer can be labelled gluten free if it contains no more than 20mg of gluten per kg as sold, which is the 20ppm figure you will see everywhere. The threshold comes from Regulation 828/2014, carried into GB law unchanged. The same regulation defines “very low gluten” at 100ppm, a label you will almost never see on beer.

There is one more label rule that does a lot of quiet work. A gluten removed beer brewed from barley must still declare “contains barley” on the allergen line. A naturally gluten free beer cannot, because no barley went in. If you want to know which type you are holding, skip the marketing and read the allergen line.

Coeliac UK recognises both types and asks producers to say which method they used. Its public pages carry no approved beer list; the charity’s list sits inside its members’ Food and Drink Guide and app. That absence is why we keep a public directory with the testing claim recorded against each beer.

Naturally gluten free vs gluten removed

Naturally gluten free beer (NGCI, for No Gluten Containing Ingredients) is brewed from grains that never contained gluten: millet, sorghum, buckwheat, rice, quinoa. There is no gluten to remove and no threshold to argue about.

Gluten removed beer starts as a conventional barley brew. An enzyme added during production chops the gluten protein into fragments small enough to test below 20ppm. Peroni Gluten Free, Stella Artois Gluten Free and most other supermarket options are made this way.

The argument between the camps is about the test. The standard R5 ELISA assay was designed for whole gluten proteins and can underread the fragments left in fermented beer. That is the reason the same enzyme treated beer that is legally gluten free in Britain can only be sold as “crafted to remove gluten” in the US. Some coeliacs drink gluten removed beer for years without trouble. Some react to beers that test clean and move to NGCI only.

We have set out the full picture, including the testing science and the international disagreement, in the naturally gluten free guide and the ppm explainer. If you are newly diagnosed, start with can coeliacs drink beer?

Where to buy gluten free beer

Supermarkets. Every major chain stocks at least the big gluten removed lagers, typically around £7 to £8 for a 4 pack of 330ml bottles. The ranges differ more than you would expect: M&S carries a surprisingly broad own-label range, Aldi and Lidl rotate theirs seasonally, and Tesco has the widest branded shelf. We keep a stocked list with prices and a verdict for each: Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda, Morrisons, M&S, Waitrose, Aldi and Lidl, plus the cross-store comparison and the cheapest options.

Online specialists. The craft end of gluten free beer barely touches supermarket shelves. Our guide to the best online shops covers the specialist retailers worth using.

Direct from the brewery. Most of the dedicated gluten free producers sell from their own sites, often with fresher stock than any retailer. Buying direct lists them.

Gluten free beer in pubs

The honest answer: expect bottles, not pumps. Greene King IPA Gluten Free and Peroni Gluten Free are the bottles you will most often find in a pub fridge. Draught gluten free beer exists but is rare, partly because a gluten free keg poured through shared lines picks up a cross contamination risk that undoes the label.

The practical move is to ask what is in the fridge rather than scanning the bar, and to ask whether a dedicated line is used if you do see a gluten free tap. Our pub guide covers the chains, the questions worth asking, and what to do when the answer is a blank look.

The styles worth exploring

The lazy assumption is that gluten free means lager and nothing else. The directory says otherwise: 39 lagers, yes, but also 37 pale ales, 23 IPAs, 12 pilsners, porters, stouts, bitters and sours from breweries that treat gluten free as a brewing constraint rather than a product category.

Each style guide picks the beers we rate: lager, pale ale, IPA, pilsner, stout, porter, craft beer generally and low and alcohol free.

Dedicated gluten free breweries

63 of the directory’s 271 beers come from breweries where the entire operation is gluten free, which removes the cross contamination question at source. Bellfield in Edinburgh, billed as the UK’s first entirely gluten free brewery when it launched, remains the best known. Birmingham Brewing Company, AltGrain in Essex and others have followed, each with a different approach to grains and testing.

The breweries index profiles them, including interviews with the people doing the brewing: Abbeydale, Black Isle, Hambleton and Wold Top.

Gluten free and alcohol free

The overlap used to be a single beer. It is now a real category. Daura 0.0% arrived in Tesco in April 2026 as a certified gluten free, alcohol free lager in 4 packs of 330ml cans, with each batch tested below 20ppm. Williams Bros Joker AF and Big Drop’s gluten free beers cover the craft end. The directory currently lists 27 beers at 0.5% ABV or below.

The gluten free alcohol free guide has the full set with verdicts.

How we keep this current

Gluten free beer guides go stale fast. The most cited UK list online was last meaningfully updated in early 2024 and still recommends a brewery that readers report has closed. Supermarket ranges rotate quarterly. Beers get reformulated, certified, discontinued.

So this guide works from the directory, where each beer carries its testing claim (certified, brewer reported, or unstated), its gluten approach, ABV and where to buy. Our methodology sets out how beers get in and what the testing labels mean. When something changes, the directory changes, and this page gets re-dated when the substance moves.

If your usual beer is the question, the brand checks give a straight yes or no for 43 mainstream beers. If you are past the question and want something good, start browsing. The point of all of it is the same: great beer that happens to be gluten free.