This June, Coeliac New Zealand is leading Coeliac Awareness Week (15 – 21 June 2026), calling for greater understanding of coeliac disease and earlier recognition, while offering practical support and resources to help Kiwis thrive gluten free.

For most people, a cold beer is an easy pleasure. For the thousands of New Zealanders living with coeliac disease, it has long been something to navigate carefully - or give up altogether. This Coeliac Awareness Week, that changes, with the arrival of O'Brien Gluten Free Beer in New Zealand for the first time.

O'Brien's story doesn't begin in a boardroom. It begins with a brewer who happens to be coeliac himself. Back in 2003, Australian beer industry veteran John O'Brien set out to solve a problem he lived with personally: how to make a genuinely good beer that he, and others like him, could safely enjoy. Not a watered-down compromise. Not a beer that came with an asterisk. A proper one.

That turned out to be harder than it sounds. Conventional beer relies on wheat and barley — both off the table for coeliacs. So, John turned to ancient grains, brewing with sorghum and millet, grains used to make fermented drinks thousands of years ago. Getting them to behave like a modern craft beer meant rethinking the process from the ground up. He worked with Australian farmers to source the right malted grains, modified his brewing equipment, and spent two years on trial and error before he was satisfied. The first commercial O'Brien brew launched in 2005.

The detail that matters most to the coeliac community is this: O'Brien is brewed gluten free from the start, not made conventionally and stripped of gluten afterwards. In New Zealand and Australia, a product can only be labelled "gluten free" if it contains no detectable gluten — the strictest standard in the world. That distinction is everything for someone whose immune system reacts to the smallest trace. O'Brien was built for exactly that standard.

Two decades on, the beer John created has earned more than 100 local and international awards, including being named the World's Best Gluten Free Beer at the World Beer Awards in 2021. It's now the most awarded gluten free beer in Australia and is stocked in thousands of venues there. The recognition is welcome, but it was never the point — the point was that people who'd resigned themselves to going without could have a beer they actually looked forward to.

The New Zealand range spans four styles — a crisp Lager, a Pale Ale, a fruitier XPA, and a Brown Ale for cooler months — so there's something to suit most tastes and seasons.

O'Brien is being brought to New Zealand by Worthy, a proud supporter of Coeliac Awareness Week 2026. For Worthy, partnering with the coeliac community isn't about selling a product — it's about making sure a long-overdue option is finally on the shelf for the people who've waited longest for it.

If you'd like to try it, ask for O'Brien at your local liquor store, or find out more at worthy.nz/fmcg-distribution/obrien-beer/.

Please enjoy responsibly. O'Brien Gluten Free Beer is available to those aged 18 and over.

For more information on Coeliac Awareness Week 2026, or to learn more about coeliac disease and support available, please visit www.coeliac.org.nz.

A huge thank you to Coeliac Awareness Week’s 2026 industry supporters, including our Platinum Partner - Arnott's , Platinum Sponsors: Ploughmans Bakery, FreshLife Food, Lee Kum Kee, My Food Bag, NZ Bakels, Sunbeam and Gold Sponsors: Marcels, Allergywise, O’Brien GF Beer and Eat Choice