The first perfect days of spring are upon us. When the sky is cloudless and blue and the temperatures are resting easily in the seventies, it’s time to hit the beer garden, the sidewalk café, the patio or even your front porch. Grab a cold beer, bask in the warm sun and do some people watching. Sounds like a worry-free afternoon, right? Not quite.
Drinker, your beer is perilously close to getting skunked.
When beer is exposed to light, a chemical reaction begins that will quickly produce a pronounced off flavor. Everyone has tasted it. People call it “skunky” or “skunked” beer, and associate it mostly with beers in clear or green glass bottles.
The technical term for the cause of this off flavor is 3-methyl-2-butene-1-thiol, but even brewers just say it’s “light-struck” or skunked. This flavor, which some consumers don’t mind, is “formed as a result of exposure of beer to daylight or artificial light. This initiates a reaction involving hop bitter acids, vitamins and sulphur compounds,” according to the Cicerone Certification Program… CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL STORY AT RIVERFRONT TIMES
