In this issue, you will find:

1. Seasons Greetings
2. Company Progress
3. What's next?
4. Michelob Ultra and other beers
5. Monthly Questions (New Section)
6. Housekeeping

We hope you enjoy following our journey through the world of innovation and great beer.

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Seasons Greetings   Top of Page  
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On behalf of the entire team, I would like to take the opportunity to wish all of you a healthy and happy New Year and holiday season. We thank you for all the encouragement and support we have received over the past 6 months and look forward to being able to offer everyone a beer in 2003.

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Company Progress  Top of Page  
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As we mentioned in the last newsletter, we have taken the last couple months to work on our brewing methods and procedures in order to improve the quality of our beer. So far, we have had great success with these tests. We also mentioned that we were working on a partnership with a potential malting company. While the deal is not dead, we feel the chances of success are fairly slim. Fortunately we were prepared for this possibility and have developed relationships with two other companies that can supply our gluten free malt. This is a very positive development.

In other areas, we recently had conversations with an executive at a significant player in the brewing industry and are investigating the opportunities of working together. We feel this potential partnership would not only improve our chances of long-term company stability but it would also help to raise the awareness of celiac disease in the general public.

For those of you who have contacted us about investment opportunities, we have not forgotten about you. We have the unique opportunity to meet with several industry business leaders and have them evaluate our plan. This is a rare opportunity and we decided to use these resources to solidify our plan before sending it to interested parties.

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What's next?  Top of Page  
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For those of you in the Northeast, we have scheduled a taste testing event at the Healthy Villi, Boston Chapter, Support Group meeting on Sunday February 2nd. For additional information, please contact Marjorie Rogers, Membership Chairperson (76513.1527@compuserve.com) for more information on the event.

We plan on scheduling other events around the country starting in the early spring.

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Michelob Ultra and others  Top of Page  
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We continue to notice postings to the listserve and other discussion groups about the status of Michelob Ultra (low-carb beer) and other potentially safe beers for Celiacs. To our chagrin, we continue to get unsupported reports that Michelob Ultra is a rice beer. This is completely false. While Michelob Ultra does contain a percentage of rice, as does Bud and Bud Lite, the main ingredient is still barley. This information comes directly from the Anheuser-Busch web site (http://www.anheuser-busch.com/news/MichelobUltraLaunch.htm). With that said, we do not know the levels of gluten or gluten peptides that are in the beer. Therefore, we can say with some degree of certainty that Michelob Ultra does contain gluten and/or peptides; we just cannot say whether or not the levels are low enough to avoid reactions and/or intestinal damage. Therefore, every one needs to make their own decision in regards to drinking this beer.

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Monthly Question(s)  Top of Page  
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Since we get quite a few questions from our great supporters that seem to be of interest to others, we decided to dedicate a section of our newsletter to answer some of your more frequent questions.

1) As celiacs, do you plan on giving back to the community that supports you? The short answer is absolutely. We have already donated several cases of beer that were used to raise money for the University of Maryland Celiac Research Center. We are also investigating becoming a national sponsor for the Celiac Walk in May. Once we become profitable, we can clearly do more; such as funding research grants and supporting other celiac endeavors.

2) Where will be able to find/buy your beer? Hopefully our beer will be available everywhere. Realistically speaking, we will not be able to distribute our beer to the entire US for our initial launch. We are working with a couple large grocery chains to offer our products as well as some mail order/internet companies that can ship to some of the more rural areas. This should give us the largest initial coverage possible. For states that do not allow beer to be sold in supermarkets (such as Pennsylvania), we will be working with beer distributors. We are also working with a company to distribute our beer in the UK. We are looking for a similarly interested company in Canada and Australia. We are working very hard to make sure that everyone that wants to purchase our beer, can do so with convenience.

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HouseKeeping  Top of Page  
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Happy New Year,