Gluten-Reduced Beer Consumer Survey, 2014–2015: The Tabulated Results
This dataset supports: Gluten-Reduced Beer Survey Results — the narrative page that interprets it, and Gluten-Reduced Beer Is Not Gluten-Free.
This page is deliberately a data page. The argument — why liking the beer protected nobody, why the confusion was structural rather than incidental — lives on the narrative page. This page is the record itself.
Methods, briefly
The Celiac Support Association and Bard's Beer surveyed people living gluten-free between 22 December 2014 and 28 February 2015, hosted on FluidSurveys. 985 unique responses were collected, including 378 written comments. Respondents were asked about diagnosis, whether they had tried a barley-based beer processed to remove gluten, what happened when they did, whether they knew the grain at purchase, what gluten level they personally accept, and whether such products should be marketed as gluten-free.
Per-question denominators. Every percentage uses the number of people who answered that question as its base, which is why the bases differ — only respondents who had already tried the beer were asked whether they knew it contained barley, so that question has 832 answers rather than 985. Where a base could not be reconstructed from the published summary, the base column is blank rather than guessed.
Two provenances, both published here. The CSA's published summary is the source of record. Where Gluten Free Brewer recomputed a figure from the raw response export, both numbers appear, labelled. They differ slightly and in one direction that matters to nobody's conclusion — the published overall reaction rate is 39.8%, the recomputation is 38.9% — but the arithmetic belongs in the open.
What is and is not published here
Published — two files. The tabulated results (counts, bases, percentages for every measure below), and the response-level export: all 985 individual responses, de-identified, so anyone can recompute our figures or ask a question we did not.
Removed from the response file: IP address, browser, device, referrer, submission timestamps, and the survey platform's respondent IDs. Every row carries a sequential number that links to nothing.
Geography is kept but coarsened. Respondent location is state or country level — useful data, and the reason the file supports a map. Any location with fewer than five respondents is collapsed into Other US state or Other international, because a single respondent from one small territory, combined with a diagnosis and a reported reaction, stops being a statistic and becomes a person. That moves 60 of 822 rows; every state large enough to plot survives intact.
Held back: the 378 free-text stories and the 184 "other, please specify" entries. Those are people describing their own medical experiences in their own words. The consent language governing the 2015 survey is not in the export and we have not located it — until we know what respondents agreed to, republishing their words is a decision that is not ours to make. If you are researching this and need them, ask; we would rather handle that individually than publish it and hope.
On the brand columns. Respondents could tick more than one beer, so a reaction cannot be attributed to any single brand — a per-brand reaction rate computed from this file is not valid, however tempting the arithmetic. The brands are published because withholding them would be its own distortion, and because the rates cluster closely enough (29–43%) to say something useful: this reads as a property of the process, not of one company.
How to read this through our doctrine
Two figures carry the argument, and neither is the headline.
The first is the split by liking. Of the 578 respondents who enjoyed the beer, 209 reported a gluten-related reaction anyway — 36.2%, against 38.9% for everyone who drank one. Taste and safety came apart completely. A consumer cannot taste the risk, which is why self-assessment is not a control.
The second is severity. Of 279 reported reactions, 141 were strong rather than slight — 19.7% of everyone who drank one. Half the reactions here were the severe kind, not faint unease.
One honest note in the other direction: the people who disliked the beer reported reactions at 50.4%, meaningfully higher than those who liked it. Some of them plausibly disliked it because they reacted to it. That is a confound worth naming, and it does not weaken the finding — it sharpens why the liked-it group is the one to look at.
Explore this data
Sort, filter, and compare measures across sections. The full tables below remain the printable, citable record; this is the same data, interactive.
Interactive explorer30 tabulated measures
Loading the explorer…
The dataset
Percentages as recorded. "Base n" is the number of people who answered that question where it could be established; blank where the published summary does not state it.
Sample and exposure7 measures
| Measure | Base | Base n | Count | % | Provenance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total unique responses | all respondents | 985 | 985 | 100.0 | CSA published summary |
| Written comments submitted | all respondents | 985 | 378 | CSA published summary | |
| Diagnosis requiring a gluten-free diet | answered the diagnosis question | 87.0 | CSA published summary | ||
| Diagnosis requiring a gluten-free diet | answered the diagnosis question | 980 | 88.3 | GFB recomputation from raw export | |
| Diagnosed with celiac disease | answered the diagnosis question | 75.7 | CSA published summary | ||
| Diagnosed with celiac disease | answered the diagnosis question | 980 | 75.5 | GFB recomputation from raw export | |
| Had tried a barley-based beer processed to remove gluten | all respondents | 65.7 | CSA published summary |
Reactions13 measures
Among everyone who tried it and reported an outcome:
| Measure | Base | Base n | Count | % | Provenance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reported a gluten-related physical reaction | those who tried it | 39.8 | CSA published summary | ||
| Reported a gluten-related physical reaction | tried it and reported an outcome | 717 | 279 | 38.9 | GFB recomputation from raw export |
| No reaction | tried it and reported an outcome | 717 | 438 | 61.1 | GFB recomputation from raw export |
| Slight reaction | tried it and reported an outcome | 717 | 138 | 19.2 | GFB recomputation from raw export |
| Strong reaction | tried it and reported an outcome | 717 | 141 | 19.7 | GFB recomputation from raw export |
Split by whether they liked the beer:
| Measure | Base | Base n | Count | % | Provenance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Any reaction | liked the beer | 578 | 209 | 36.2 | GFB recomputation from raw export |
| No reaction | liked the beer | 578 | 369 | 63.8 | GFB recomputation from raw export |
| Slight reaction | liked the beer | 578 | 107 | 18.5 | GFB recomputation from raw export |
| Strong reaction | liked the beer | 578 | 102 | 17.6 | GFB recomputation from raw export |
| Any reaction | did not like the beer | 139 | 70 | 50.4 | GFB recomputation from raw export |
| No reaction | did not like the beer | 139 | 69 | 49.6 | GFB recomputation from raw export |
| Slight reaction | did not like the beer | 139 | 31 | 22.3 | GFB recomputation from raw export |
| Strong reaction | did not like the beer | 139 | 39 | 28.1 | GFB recomputation from raw export |
Among diagnosed celiac respondents:
| Measure | Base | Base n | Count | % | Provenance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Any reaction | diagnosed celiac respondents who tried it | 529 | 211 | 39.9 | GFB recomputation from raw export |
Awareness, marketing, and acceptance thresholds10 measures
| Measure | Base | Base n | Count | % | Provenance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Not aware at purchase that the beer contained wheat or barley | answered the awareness question | 832 | 361 | 43.4 | CSA published summary |
| Both reported a reaction and were unaware of the grain | answered both questions | 149 | GFB recomputation from raw export | ||
| Said such products should not be marketed as gluten-free | all respondents | 72.1 | CSA published summary | ||
| Will consume zero gluten only | answered the threshold question | 41.2 | CSA published summary | ||
| Accepts anything labelled gluten free | answered the threshold question | 22.0 | CSA published summary | ||
| Accepts anything certified gluten free | answered the threshold question | 19.9 | CSA published summary | ||
| Accepts less than 20 ppm | answered the threshold question | 10.8 | CSA published summary | ||
| Accepts less than 5 ppm | answered the threshold question | 3.5 | CSA published summary | ||
| Accepts less than 10 ppm | answered the threshold question | 2.7 | CSA published summary |
Download
→ Response-level export, 985 rows (CSV) — one row per respondent, de-identified. This is the file to use for reanalysis.
→ Tabulated results, 30 measures (CSV) — bases, counts, percentages, provenance, and per-row notes.
Response file — data dictionary13 columns
| Column | Values |
|---|---|
respondent_id | Sequential 1–985. Arbitrary; links to nothing. |
location | US state or country, as geolocated by the survey platform. Cells below n=5 collapsed to Other US state / Other international. Blank for 163 respondents. |
reason_for_gluten_free_diet | Celiac diagnosis · another diagnosis requiring a gluten-free diet · health reasons · does not follow one |
consumption_habit | Zero gluten · accepts "gluten free" labelling · accepts certification · under 20 / 10 / 5 ppm |
tried_gluten_reduced_beer | Yes · No |
tried_brunehaut, tried_estrella_damm_daura, tried_omission, tried_prairie_path, tried_other_brand | yes or blank. Multi-select — see the brand note above. |
experience | Seven values crossing liking with reaction: liked / did not like × no reaction, slight, strong; plus "I have not tried one." |
aware_of_grain_at_purchase | Yes · No. Asked only of those who had tried it (832 answers). |
should_be_marketed_gluten_free | Yes · No |
Blank means the respondent did not answer that question. Every percentage on this page uses the number who answered that question as its denominator, which is why bases differ.
Record
First published 2026-08-14 as v1.0. Corrections to date: none. This dataset is a frozen record — it changes only for corrections, and every correction is logged in this section with its date and what changed.
Zenodo deposit: pending. This dataset will be deposited under CC BY 4.0 and this section updated with the labeled DOI pair (this version and all versions) per the data-page standard.
What this dataset does and does not establish
Supports: that many gluten-free consumers did not treat gluten-reduced beer as equivalent to gluten-free beer; that reported reactions were common enough to demand follow-up; that liking the beer did not predict tolerating it; that label and retail confusion were real.
Does not establish: a clinical reaction rate, a biological mechanism for any individual reaction, that every person with celiac disease will react to every gluten-reduced beer, or that survey data replaces laboratory testing, medical research, or regulatory review. These are self-reported consumer responses collected online, with the selection effects that implies.
How to cite this dataset
Celiac Support Association and Bard's Beer. Gluten Reduced Beer Survey, 2014–2015. Tabulated results republished by Gluten Free Brewer, 2026. https://glutenfreebrewer.com/research/survey-data/gluten-reduced-beer-survey-2015
Related
- Gluten-Reduced Beer Survey Results — the narrative reading, including the reaction chart
- Gluten-Reduced Beer Is Not Gluten-Free — the doctrine this evidence supports
- Truly Gluten-Free — the house standard
- Truly Gluten-Free Standard (GFB-TGF, draft) — the proposal
Source and Validation Notes
Assembled programmatically from two in-repo sources: the published figures, thresholds, awareness numbers, and reconciliation footnote on docs/gluten-free/gluten-survey-results.md, and the reaction cross-tab held in the SurveyReactionChart component, which was itself recomputed by GFB from the raw response export. A single generator emits both this page's tables and the CSV, so the download and the display cannot drift apart.
Every internal figure was reconciled before publication: the three reaction bands each sum to their stated totals (438+138+141 = 717; 369+107+102 = 578; 69+31+39 = 139); the liked and disliked groups sum to the whole (578+139 = 717); reported reactions sum to 279; and each stated percentage recomputes from its own count and base to the published decimal.
The response-level file was built directly from the archived platform export (UTF-16, tab-delimited, 985 rows × 24 columns) by a script that drops the identifying columns, coarsens geography, and renames the survey questions to short field names. It was verified by reproducing the published control totals from the output file rather than from the source: 717 respondents who tried the beer and reported an outcome, 740 celiac diagnoses, 700 against the marketing claim, 361 unaware of the grain at purchase.
A correction to what this archive was previously described as. The export was recorded as having "names and contact details removed." That is true but was incomplete: the file also carried an IP address for all 985 respondents, geolocation for 822, plus browser, device, and referrer. None of those reach this site. The narrative page's description has been corrected to match.
The originating organisations are named because the survey was published under their names and Bard's commissioned it. Percentages are as published by the CSA except where a GFB recomputation is explicitly labelled.