What's the toughest aspect of observing the eight-day Jewish festival of Passover?

Is it the cleaning of the house in preparation of the holiday? Digesting the inordinate amounts of matzo during the Seder meals? How about the fact that the Pirates' home opener cut into the first day's observance?

No. The most difficult thing for some to grapple with is the lack of kosher-for-Passover beer.

With the entire holiday predicated on the biblical admonition to avoid edible fermented grain products or leavening (Exodus 12:19), that leaves the beer lover with no choice at all.

Until now.

The good folks at Ramapo Valley Brewery in Suffren, N.Y., have developed Gluten-Free Honey Lager beer without the usual main ingredients of wheat or barley.

The 3-year-old brewery claims that the kosher-for-Passover beer is the first such concoction in more than 2,000 years.

It does have a bright golden color and an alcoholic content of 5.5 percent. Molasses is used for flavor, along with "noble," or top hops for aroma and additional flavor. It's brewed in dedicated fermenters using kosher yeast under rabbinic supervision.

"You can taste the difference between a regular beer and this," brewery co-owner Egon Linzenberg said candidly. "But it's the only game in town."

As Pirates fans already know, you have to make do with you've got.

Gluten-Free Honey Lager is sold only by the case, and it's not cheap: $50 for kosher-for-Passover beer. Linzenberg said the beer will be sold year round and hopes to make it available in Pittsburgh within the next year.

He said the new beer already is popular with people who are gluten intolerant, a condition known as celiac disease.

Linzenberg understands that Gluten-Free Honey Lager has a long way to go before entering into the pantheon of favorite Passover foods such as matzo, wine and haroset, the combination of apples, nuts, wine and honey that forms a mortar-like paste.

He knows it has time to gain popularity.

"It's a kosher-for-Passover beer," he said. "There's nothing else."

Gluten-Free Beer is made with fermentable amber honey with molasses for flavor, nutrients and color. hops add a touch of bitterness to balance the honey sweetness. It's recommended with all kinds of food.