Editor’s note: This is part of The Know’s series, Staff Favorites. Each week, we give our opinions on the best that Colorado has to offer for dining, shopping, entertainment, outdoor activities and more. (We’ll also let you in on some hidden gems.)
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The moment that I found out I had to cut gluten from my diet, my heart sank.
It was a Friday afternoon last May and I had recently started working with a nutritionist to address some longstanding gastrointestinal issues. The results of my GI Map test suggested I had a gluten sensitivity. That was the last thing I wanted to hear.
Not only are bread and pasta my favorite food groups, I have been a beer journalist for more than a decade. It seemed incredibly unfair that I would have to give up all my favorite things and even more than that — what would become of my career?
Perhaps seeing the horror on my face, my nutritionist encouraged me to try living gluten-free for just one month to see if it made a difference in how I felt. I committed, hesitantly, and left our meeting to eat a piece of leftover pizza, giving myself until the end of the weekend to start detoxing.
Since going gluten-free more than two months ago, I’ve learned a lot about myself and my eating habits. For one, I miss beer a lot. Of all the things I’ve had to refrain from consuming, beer is by far the hardest to resist.
So when I realized that cans from Holidaily Brewing Co. had traveled from the Golden-based brewery to my local liquor store on the Western Slope, I was beyond stoked.
Opened in 2016, Holidaily Brewing Co. makes certified gluten-free beers using alternative grains, such as buckwheat and millet. Recipes like the Favorite Blonde Ale and Fat Randy’s IPA enable people who are allergic to gluten or reducing their intake to indulge in beers with similar body and carbonation as those that use barley.
That may not sound like too much to ask, but when founder Karen Hertz first decided to start the brewery more than a decade ago, choices for celiac and gluten-intolerant drinkers were slim. Most gluten-free beers at the time were made with sorghum syrup, which did little to satisfy beer drinkers’ palates, she said.
“These beers were really thin, they had a really weird aftertaste. It just didn’t taste great,” Hertz said. “That got me looking into ingredients — like, why do these suck so bad?”
For Hertz, starting Holidaily Brewing Co. was a deeply personal endeavor. In 2007, she was diagnosed with melanoma, and the following year, she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. Hertz treated — and defeated — both by undergoing surgery and radiation. Doctors then advised her to work with a nutritionist in hopes of addressing underlying causes.
“I couldn’t understand how a healthy 30-year-old with zero family history was getting back-to-back cancer,” Hertz said. Turns out, gluten was the culprit.
Her transition to a gluten-free life sounded strikingly similar to mine. There were decent replacements for some things, and there were foods that Hertz could live without. And then there were things like beer, which “seemed like a really big barrier to feeling normal,” she said. As a native Coloradan and former Coors Brewing Co. employee, the beverage was ingrained in her lifestyle.
“The beauty of beer is moderation to me. I didn’t want to be the vodka queen at the tailgate party. I really wanted to be able to have beers with my friends,” Hertz said. “That kept coming up as a social issue and feeling awkward and feeling left out.”
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That cemented her ambition to reinvent what gluten-free beer could be. Hertz started working with Grouse Malt House in northern Colorado, which malts gluten-free grains including millet, buckwheat, quinoa, oats, rice and corn, to pinpoint which best mimicked barley. She landed on a combination of buckwheat and millet that today serves as the base of each beer Holidaily makes.
Getting the taste and mouthfeel right out the gate was imperative, Hertz said. That’s why she hired Wayne Burns, who had previously brewed for Bell’s Brewery and Wynkoop Brewing Co. and would go on to open his own spot, the now-closed Burn Family Artisan Ales, to develop what became the first recipes.
“I knew that if we were going to put anything gluten-free on the market, we had one chance. If someone’s going to give a gluten-free beer a try, it has to be good or they’re never going to drink it again. Because there’s already this stigma around gluten-free,” she said.
That strategy appears to have paid off. At a time when craft beer as a whole is struggling, Holidaily is thriving. In 2021, the brewery made 3,434 barrels of beer for drinkers in Colorado and four other states. This year, Hertz said production will hit 7,000 barrels — an increase of 104% in five years — and Holidaily now distributes to 13 states in the U.S.
Hertz attributes the company’s growth, simply, to supply and demand. Of the approximately 9,500 existing craft breweries, a fraction are dedicated to making gluten-free beer. Hertz estimates it’s about a dozen companies. At the same time, the number of people who are reducing their gluten intake is rising.
An estimated 3 million Americans are affected by celiac disease, according to the Celiac Disease Foundation. Millions more are believed to be gluten-intolerant or have a gluten sensitivity — as many as 1 in 20 U.S. residents, research suggests.
Since the beginning, Hertz’s mission has been to get beer to people who can’t have it. That’s proved a worthwhile goal not only for the company’s growth, but also for the personal stories that come along with it. Hertz said visitors to the Golden taproom have started crying when they see 14 different options on tap that they can drink.
Holidaily’s distributed retail selection is more modest with five different packaged options, but drinkers in Colorado usually get access to newer innovations before they go to other states. The Confidence Booster Juicy IPA, which hit store shelves in May, is a flavorful new addition to the lineup that competes with the likes of other hazy beers on the market. And the Darty Lager, also released in May, is a 4.5% ABV beer apt for pairing with hot summer days spent outdoors.
I know because I’ve tried them both on my recent quest to live a happy gluten-free life. Next, I plan to try Holidaily’s mixed pack of fruited blonde ales, a luxury of flavor diversity in a traditionally slim pickings category.
As Hertz looks toward the future, she’s optimistic that the now 10-year-old Holidaily can be part of a broader effort to renew consumer interest in beer after many difficult years for the industry.
“We have fun brands and fit into a beer category, but also a ‘better for you’ category, which I think intrigues a younger generation. We have a cool story, we’re a woman-owned brand. I think all that plays into Holidaily getting to help be a part of bringing people back to beer,” she said.
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