Stoic Brews opened in Bentonville as Arkansas’s first gluten-free brewery, using alternative beer ingredients.
BENTONVILLE, Ark. — Stoic Brews Alternative, Arkansas’s first entirely gluten-free brewery and taproom, is now open in Bentonville.
Owner and head brewer Rebecca Davitt has been gluten-free for nine years. After struggling to find safe options at local breweries, she decided to open her own taproom using no glutenous products.
“We only buy from certified gluten-free companies and we don’t manufacture any glutenous products here. We don’t allow it in the facility,” Davitt said.
Instead of traditional grains like wheat, barley, or rye, Stoic Brews uses alternatives such as millet, buckwheat, corn, quinoa and rice. Every beer, cider, and kombucha is brewed on-site, with the process taking up to four weeks from start to finish.
Davitt said many customers are surprised to learn the beer is gluten-free.
“We actually get a lot of people who say, ‘I couldn’t even tell it was gluten-free’ until we told them much later,” she said.
Davitt said the brewery has already made an emotional impact on some visitors.
“We get reactions from ‘Oh, this is great’ to ‘I haven’t had a beer in 20 years,’ and they’re sobbing,” Davitt said.
Scott LaFontaine, assistant professor of food science at the University of Arkansas, said rice is becoming a reliable substitute in the brewing industry.
“With malted rice, you could probably create something that tastes amazing, very similar to what would be a full strength, barley product,” LaFontaine said.
For Davitt, Stoic Brews is about more than beer.
“It’s that feeling of connection,” she said. “It’s just bringing back that nostalgia and that feeling of being like the rest of the population.”