When do beers skunk

Andy Baraghani puts his bold, stylish spin on Thanksgiving classics. All Sections. About Us. B2B Publishing. Business Visionaries. Hot Property. Times Events. Times Store. Facebook Twitter Show more sharing options Share Close extra sharing options. Subscriber Account active since. It's fall. Time for football tailgates, baseball playoffs, and Oktoberfest — which technically began in September, but no one is going to stop you from celebrating.

So go ahead and pop open a beer. But sometimes an awful thing happens when you lift that cool glistening bottle to your lips. Something tastes off. The beer is bad. Skunked is really bad. If you've experienced it, you know, and you don't want it to happen again. Some people blame bad refrigeration practices — letting the beer go from cool to warm and back again — but even though that can make beer stale by increasing the rate of oxidation, it's not the culprit for that skunky taste.

Skunked beer is caused by a specific chemical reaction triggered by exposure to light , as explained in the latest Reactions video by the American Chemical Society. Brewers know this — there's a reason why craft beer comes in brown bottles or cans, as opposed to green or — shudder — clear glass. Beer gets its bitterness and a lot of its flavor from hops, one of the main ingredients needed to make the delicious beverage. They're added to the wort, or not-yet-beer, during the brewing process.

However, skunkiness in beer is caused not by heat, but by light. In fact, skunky beer is often called lightstruck beer, which sounds way cooler than it actually is. Isohumulones also known as alpha acids , the bitter compounds in hops used in beer, are very sensitive to natural light artificial light affects them, too, but not nearly as fast , which triggers a chemical reaction. Some people can detect MBT at concentrations as low as one-billionth of a gram in a ounce beer. Canned beer offers the best protection against damaging light waves, and brown bottles rate a close second.

Pilsners , traditionally bottled in green glass, are very susceptible to skunking. Serious Eats has advice on how to tell skunky from funky. Heat speeds up oxidation, and the beer begins to taste like cardboard. To preserve the flavors in your beer, especially beer bottles, always store in a cool, dark place, like, say, your refrigerator.