An adjective describing
beer that has been
ruined by
exposure to
light. So called because it has the unmistakeable
odor of a
skunk. The odor is caused when
hop resins in the beer react with light to produce
mercaptan and related
chemicals, the same compounds that give skunks their distinctive aroma. While people who
know a little bit about beer will instantly recognize it as a
fatal flaw and immediateley
dump the offending
beverage down the
drain, novice beer
drinkers, particularly
American beer drinkers used to neutral tasting
mass-market brews, sometimes mistake it as a sign of
quality in
imported beers like
Heineken and
Becks. The defect is quite common in these otherwise fine beers for a few simple reasons, the main one being that the
green bottles in which they are sold are transparent to light at the
wavelength (~530nm) which causes the
chemical reaction that produces the
offending mercaptan. This, combined with the fact that they usually are sold from the well-lit display cases of
convenience stores and
supermarkets (in the
U.S.A., at least) gives
consumers little chance of getting the quality beer that was put into the bottles at the
brewery. The beers mentioned above are supposed to be fairly light in flavor, so if you get one that has an aroma or flavor significantly stronger than the American
lager you are used to, dump it, because it is not supposed to taste like that.
Fortunately, there are ways to avoid ever coming across a skunked beer in the first place. For starters, if you must buy a beer from a lighted display, go for one in
brown bottles, as it will be better protected against
damage from light. Better still, buy beer in cans. It is impossible for beer in
cans to ever become skunked. Same thing goes for
kegs, which are, after all, simply really big cans. If you just don't feel as
suave chugging from a can as you do
sipping from a bottle, and you just have to have something that comes in green bottles, buy it in a
case which will be better protected from light than the average
six-pack.