The Best Gluten-Free, Organic Beer

A girl walks into a bar…

And then walks out, because the only beer options have gluten and are terrible for you.

(ba dum bum-chhhhhh)

All jokes aside, those of us with dietary (or lifestyle) restrictions, drinking is practically out of the question.  Plus, many of my friends and contemporaries are hitting their late 20’s and early to mid 30’s, where drinking starts to cause a lot more wear and tear on our bodies and alcohol finally shows us it’s uglier side – the one you have to face in the morning, on the weekends and in the dressing room.

I first started drinking on my 21st birthday.  I had legitimately never bought alcohol before that.  No fake ID. No sneaking into bars. Never got kicked out of a nightclub. But that doesn’t mean I never drank.

VIP parties in my hometown of New York City were at my disposal by the dozen in my early modeling days, at ages 18-20, and also fairly common for me to attend.  I never had to show my ID, and I never really cared to buy alcohol outside of a night out. Unless it was available at a party, I didn’t drink it.  In fact, I first stopped drinking alcohol at 24 – a mere 3 years after I started.

That doesn’t mean I gave it up completely, but I started to evaluate what it meant to me and why I was doing it. I started to consider why I constantly felt crappier and crappier after every beverage.  Even just a pint would throw my whole body off, and so there were many months I swore it off completely.  I wondered, Was there something in it that was making me sick?

At it’s core, most beer is comprised of 4 ingredients: filtered water, hops, barley and yeast.  The yeast and barley, which contain gluten, are the culprit here. For many people, beer is a great pleasure.  For others, it is a source of excruciating pain. The bogeyman of your belly is gluten, which most people can digest with ease.  However, for millions of people who suffer from celiac disease or have gluten sensitivities, ingesting gluten causes horrible stomach upset, bloating, cramping and pain.

For me, it just wasn’t worth it.

Then recently I came across a UK based brewery that claimed to be gluten free, organic, filtered but still incredible tasty!

I was willing to give it a shot…

On a warm, beautiful San Diego beach day worthy of a beer photoshoot/commercial, I popped open a chilled beverage and had a sip.

 And my life is forever changed! I cannot say enough about how impressed I am with Celia Organic Beer.  They have truly taken beer to a whole new level! I couldn’t NOT share this with you…