Review: New Planet’s Tread Lightly Gluten-Free Ale

New Planet Tread Lightly Ale

While craft beer can be enjoyed by anyone, demographically, it’s generally puchased by the middle to upper class. Breweries are a business, and the guys (or gals) running them do market research. A not-insignificant chunk of these people (particularly those of the 12-Tribes-of-Israel persuasion) suffer from Celiac’s Disease, preventing them from being able to eat (or, more impotantly, drink) glutens.

This has spawned a new niche market for gluten-free beer. Buckwheat, sorghum, corn, soy, and many other non-standard grains are used to provide the fermentables in these beers.

I decided to give one of these beers a try. The one I found was New Planet’s Tread Lightly Ale. New Planet is a brewery just opened this year based in Boulder, CO. They are committed to enviromentally conscious beer production. While they currently sell just the Tread Lightly, they aresoon to release two other beers. A portion of each beer style’s profits gets donated to a certain non-profit enviromental organization, Tread Lightly’s being the Wildlands Restoration Volunteers, a group that does trail maintenance in the Rockies. Hippy, but a cool ideal.

New Planet’s Tread Lightly Ale - 5.0%

This beer pours quite light, with a very modest head  (read: non-existant). The aroma is sweet, almost apple-y. This may come from the large portions of the fermentables coming from corn, or possibly the sorghum (having never brewed with it, I honestly couldn’t tell you what it tastes or smells like, feel free to let us know in the comments). There was little to no hop presence in the aroma, which is fairly true to style.

The texture was a suprise to me, being as lightly colored as it was I was expecting something close to an American-style lager, but I was impressed to find it had some weight to it. The hop flavor here is light, its presence is about equal to the orange zest also present. The beer is sugary-sweet, with traces of honey, though, not to the point of being ‘sickly-sweet’ (a condition I have an issue with, even dry ciders turn my stomach a bit).

While not my favorite style of beer, Tread Lightly certainly raised a few questions for me, particularly about the native African grain sorghum. I’d like to expirement with it as the base for a beer, and possibly various roasted versions of it. Please, if you have any interesting insights into its use, please let us know.