Why beer bottles are usually brown glass
Category: Health, Science & Technology
Via: buzz-of-the-orient • 2 years ago • 10 commentsBy: Ada Wood CNN (Via CTV NEWS - Canada Television News)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Why beer bottles are usually brown glass
An employee inspects a bottle at a brewery bottling plant in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. (Bernd Thissen/DPA/AP/CNN)
Have you ever cracked open a bottle of beer, poured it into a clear glass and left it outside sitting in the sun? Maybe you've come back to it after a while to take a sip -- and something isn't quite right.
If you've experienced this funky taste, it's from a chemical compound similar to the stinky smell skunks produce. That's why the beer brewing community has dubbed this process "skunking."
Chuck Skypeck, the technical brewing projects director at the Brewers Association , has owned and operated craft breweries for 21 years. He said the cause of skunking wasn't really understood until around the 1960s.
When hops in beer are exposed to strong light, a photooxidation reaction takes place, creating the compound 3-methyl-2-butene-1-thiol. To prevent the process of skunking from occurring, beer brewers have opted for darkly tinted glass. It's why you see so many beers in brown glass bottles today.
"It's a simple reaction that creates what most people see as an undesirable flavor," Skypeck said. "So, anything that shields the beer from that will preserve its flavor, so it is served as the brewer intends."
Hence the popular choice among brewers: brown. But that's not the only color seen in beer bottles; some come in green glass, too. What's behind that choice? Given that green is not as protective from light, the reason for its use is mainly marketing, according to Skypeck.
"If you look to see what brands are in green glass, you're going to probably find mostly heritage brands that have been around for a while," he said. "A fair amount of European brewers use green glass. Their green bottles are their image. And again, we're talking decades ago, there was a certain association of quality and uniqueness with green glass."
And if that green glass wasn't tinted dark enough to prevent skunking, Skypeck said consumers back then might simply say, "Oh, look, this tastes different. It's coming from Europe. It must be good."
When it comes to choosing glass as the packaging material over plastic, Skypeck said not only is glass perceived as more environmentally friendly and looks higher quality to consumers, but it prevents the beer from becoming stale, as plastics let out the carbonation in beer and let in oxygen over time.
Cans are also a popular choice for packaging and don't let in light, but skunking is still possible due to a process known as thermal aging. More studies are needed in this area, according to Skypeck, to determine which packaging is optimal to prevent skunking.
As for any other guidance on storing beer to prevent skunking, staling or any changes to the taste, Skypeck has a simple rule: cold and dark.
"Beer is basically water, barley, sometimes wheat, hops and yeast -- it's a food product. And just like any other food product, it's subject to losing its freshness," he said. "What really causes any food product to lose its freshness -- besides this photochemical reaction we talked about -- is exposure to oxygen and exposure to (warmer) temperature."
If you're ever up for a wasteful at-home experiment, place a beer in sunlight for a couple of hours, and you can taste skunking for yourself.
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My preference, Heinekens, was in green glass or cans - as in back in the days when I was fishing off my dock - rod in one hand, can of Heinekens in the other.
I've made my own beer in the past. I'd like to do it again someday soon. I love a good micro brew and there are so many places popping up around my area with their own brews. I don't like cans as I feel like the beer picks up a "can" taste.
I never noticed a "can" taste, but I guess it's possible it happens if the beer is kept for a long time, but that wasn't a problem in my case. LOL Aren't the insides of food cans coated with some kind of impervious substance to prevent contact with the metal?
Yes, can's are coated inside with a food grade plastic to prevent the beer from touching the metal of the can and there-by changing the taste. But I also feel that the taste coming out of a can is not as good as what comes out of a bottle. It could be all in my mind but my preference is to go with bottles when I can.
So then we could imbibe microplastics with our beer. I guess glass bottles have to be the best choice.
I’ve become such a beer snob that I won’t even drink 99% of what’s in stores and most bars and restaurants anymore. I’ll settle for Sierra Nevada but otherwise it’s super hazy IPAs, desert stouts, Russian stouts, barrel aged stouts, or heavily fruited sours for me. When I travel I seek out the best microbreweries, and when I find what I’m looking for I buy it and carefully pack it in a tool box that fits in my checked luggage. Luckily there’s a nearby winery that expanded into the beer and liquor market that makes this hazy single IPA that is to die for. They can it for you right out of the tap for $6 a can (16 0z). So worth it.
We have 3 microbreweries here and one of them has a stout aged in whiskey barrels I really like. Two of those and I need a nap. I also like a smooth cream ale, fruited sours and almost any stout. A hazy ipa is awesome on a really hot day too.
Beer Snob - YAY!!!!!!!
While personal preference and tastes are individual, I sometimes shake my head at what some people will drink. Such as, why for the love of God is PBR popular again? That was never a good or drinkable beer and it's again popular?
why for the love of God is PBR popular again?
Thank the millennials for that. Intentional irony in a can. I cringe at what I used to drink before microbreweries came into existence. When I was poor I drank some crap called Red Dog, or splurged on Rolling Rock at the bar. You’d have to put a gun to my head to drink it now.
you'd lose your mind in Colorado. somewhere around +/-400 craft breweries, mile high altitude before you even get into the mountains, and legal weed. they were trying to infuse THC hybrid hops or whatever a couple years back, but I'm not a beer drinker so I don't know what ever happened.