Cracked: The key to not skunking your beer

Tailgating is in full force as football season is well underway.

You’re outside, enjoying watching the game on a nice sunny day with an ice cold beer in hand. You go to take a sip… and it tastes like a skunk??

If this story is a familiar one, it is probably because you’re drinking your beer out of a clear or tinted glass.

When your beer is not protected from the sun, the sunrays actually cause a chemical reaction in the beer, changing the taste. It is the ingredient of hops specifically, that reacts with the UV rays.

As the sunlight hits your beer that is in a clear glass, it breaks down the hop-molecules which then reacts with a sulfuric compound. The new compound created is very similar to what skunks spray, giving it’s nickname of ‘skunked beer’.

In a clear glass, this reaction happens within seconds of UV rays hitting your glass. A brown tinted glass delays this process from happening by a few hours.

So next time you’re out cracking a cold one, grab canned beer or keep it in the shade to protect your beer from getting skunked.