GOLDEN, Colo. — Holidaily Brewing Company just won the gold medal for best gluten-free beer at the Great American Beer Festival, but the company’s gluten-free journey began after founder Karen Hertz had a run-in with cancer.
“The two types of cancers that I had were melanoma, and then I had thyroid cancer,” Hertz said. “Both skin and thyroid issues can be related to gluten intolerance, and so doctors were just advising that I cut gluten out entirely.”
She became frustrated with the lack of gluten-free beer options, so she decided to fix the problem herself. She took her years of experience in the beer industry and founded Holidaily in 2016.
“There's over 10,000 craft breweries in the US, but only 15 are gluten-free at this point,” Hertz said. “When we opened, we were the fifth. So, it's grown quite a bit, but it's still a pretty small community.”
Brewing a beer without gluten is very similar to brewing a traditional beer. You just replace the gluten-laden grains — barley and wheat — with millet and buckwheat.
“Once we've made sugar, the whole brewing process is the same,” Head Brewer and Operations Manager at Holidaily Jeff Joslyn said. “We extract the sugar from the grain, we hop that sweet wort, we boil it, we knock it out to a tank and ferment it with the same yeast, and at the end of the day, we've got 100% gluten-free product, because we started with gluten-free ingredients.”
Holidaily's Fat Randy’s IPA won the gold medal for gluten-free beers at the Great American Beer Festival. Joslyn attributes much of that to the positive environment at the craft brewery.
“We can work really closely with one another,” Joslyn said. “We can talk about what's working, what's not working, what we need to address real quickly, and it's a more intimate environment because of that.”
Not only is Holidaily Brewing Company setting the standard as the largest gluten-free brewery in the country, but the Golden-based business is doing it as the only certified women-owned brewery in the United States, needing to prove every year that at least 51% of the company is owned by women.
“I love motivating everybody to go after their goals, but especially young women,” Hertz said. “I am excited to see women in the beer industry grow and women entrepreneurship grow. If it motivates just one person, I’m all in.”