Yes. BARHI is naturally gluten-free.
BARHI is made from fresh Barhee dates and honey rather than grains such as wheat or barley, giving people who avoid gluten another option when choosing what to drink.
But because beer is such a familiar reference point for a cold, refreshing alcoholic drink, it’s understandable that people sometimes ask whether BARHI contains gluten too. The difference starts with what goes into the fermentation.
Why Is BARHI Gluten-Free?
Many traditional beers are brewed using barley or wheat, both of which contain gluten.
BARHI starts somewhere completely different.
Fresh Barhee dates and honey provide the fermentable ingredients at the heart of the drink. Yeast then converts naturally occurring sugars during fermentation, creating alcohol and helping transform those ingredients into the dry, lightly sparkling drink that ends up in the bottle or glass.
There are no gluten-containing grains such as barley or wheat used to make BARHI.
That’s why BARHI is naturally gluten-free rather than being a conventional beer that has subsequently had gluten removed.
Is Mead Usually Gluten-Free?
Traditional mead is made primarily by fermenting honey and water, so its core ingredients don’t naturally contain gluten.
However, mead is a broad category. Modern producers can use additional fruits, spices, flavourings or other ingredients, and production methods vary. If gluten avoidance is important to you, it is always sensible to check the information provided for the particular product rather than assuming every drink within a category is identical.
BARHI is legally a mead, but its ingredients and drinking experience are quite different from the sweet or heavy image people sometimes associate with traditional mead.
We ferment fresh Barhee dates and honey to create what we describe as a Fresh Date Spritz: dry, lightly sparkling and 6% ABV.
If you’d like to understand the category in more detail, our guide to what mead is and how it’s made explains it simply.
What Is BARHI Made From?
BARHI comes in two expressions.
BARHI Original is made with fresh Barhee dates and honey, creating a clean, crisp and refreshing profile that works particularly well with chilli-forward food.
BARHI Spiced builds on the dates and honey with star anise and orange peel, giving it a more aromatic character that works particularly well with seafood, rich creamy gravies and BBQ or grilled dishes.
Both are naturally gluten-free, 6% ABV and made with no added sugar.
Despite being made from dates and honey, BARHI isn’t designed to be sweet. Fermentation transforms the naturally occurring sugars in the ingredients, resulting in the dry drinking experience that often surprises people trying BARHI for the first time.
If you’re curious about the numbers, our guide to how much sugar is in BARHI explains the finished product in more detail.
Gluten-Free Doesn’t Have to Mean Beer
For people avoiding gluten, the drinks conversation can sometimes become unnecessarily centred around finding a gluten-free version of beer.
But beer isn’t the only starting point.
Wine, cider and traditional mead are generally made from ingredients that don’t naturally contain gluten, while BARHI begins with fresh dates and honey.
BARHI isn’t intended to imitate gluten-free beer. It is its own drink, with its own ingredients and character.
That’s an important distinction.
We didn’t begin with beer and try to remove something from it. BARHI was developed from a different fermentation altogether, as part of a wider attempt to create a refreshing alcoholic drink around food.
A Fresh Date Spritz Made for the Table
Being naturally gluten-free is an important characteristic of BARHI, but it isn’t the reason BARHI was created.
The starting point was food.
BARHI was developed to be dry, refreshing and lightly sparkling, with a profile that could sit comfortably alongside flavour-rich dishes rather than overpowering them.
That food-first philosophy eventually became BARHI Original and BARHI Spiced.
So if you’ve arrived here simply wanting to know whether BARHI contains gluten, the answer is straightforward:
BARHI is naturally gluten-free and is made without gluten-containing grains such as wheat or barley.
If you’d like to know what the drink actually tastes like, how it’s made and where a Fresh Date Spritz fits alongside beer, wine and cider, explore What Is BARHI? or read more about BARHI’s food-first story.
You can also discover BARHI Original and BARHI Spiced, or find BARHI near you.
Made for the love of food. Brewed for the celebration of laughter.
