Nasty gluten-free sorghum-based ale “brewed with strawberries and buckwheat honey” lacks body and character. Slick sorghum syrup slipstream inundates sterile strawberry souring, washed-out oaken cherry tartness and astringent Blackstrap molasses-embittered buckwheat honey dredge. A hint of rhubarb pie found beneath dessicated whiskey malting. As of 2012, the only decent gluten-free beer is De Proef’s Green’s Discovery Amber Ale.

Less pathetic, but nearly as drab, as typical gluten-free pale lagers. Unlike competitors repulsive sorghum-based output, dried-out barley (lacking gliadin proteins) proves to be wise substitute for celiac sufferers. Nonetheless, watered-down toasted cereal graining and gentle prickly-hopped rice slip derailed by nasty corn-oiled malt liquor immensity as well as acrid vegetal musk.

Here’s a first. A fruited full-bodied (no less) gluten-free English pale ale. Clear coppery liquid with tiny-bubbled soda-like carbonation lets astringent Cascade-hopped bittering sabotage initial artificial peach-cherry droll, impending green apple-browned pear lull, and cloy sorghum malt sugaring. Though corn syrupy stickiness and slight metallic snare constrain citric slide, this beats Anheuser-Busch’s similarly-styled Redbridge by a faux-barley-wheat strand.

Gluten-free beers are still dubious curiosities for celiac sufferers in 2008. Made from whole grain sorghum and free of wheat-barley-oats, this golden lager retains sticky butterscotch assertion atop honey-roasted buckwheat bluster. Faux rye-pumpernickel illusions sidetrack dark-spiced hop bittering, funky compost earthiness, and sour apple-peach pleat.