Today’s topic in my monthly Beer 101 series is one of my favourite things to talk about because it both educates beer drinkers AND reveals how corporate brewers sometimes put marketing before quality. In the column I discuss how beer is actually quite light sensitive and if not packaged properly quickly produces one of the most undesirable off-flavours around. It gets skunked. It is called that because the process produces a chemical that smells and tastes like, you guessed it, skunk.Yummy!

Avoiding skunked beer is actually quite easy – put it in a brown bottle. I go into the details of why in the column itself (linked below), but the question that screams out at you is why put your beer in clear or green bottles? The answer, of course, is marketing. Summer-oriented beers look more attractive in clear bottles. European beer distinguishes itself as “imported” by being in green. As for the taste? Hope the consumer doesn’t notice. Or, stick a lime in it to cover the skunk. Dirty secret revealed.

The column goes into more detail about the process of skunking and how you can avoid it. It is posted on the Sherbrooke Liquor Store website, which at first seems an odd location for a beer column. However, the owners are committed to increasing beer knowledge among consumers and have given me free reign to speak as I please. Read the column here.

It is the seventh in the Beer 101 series. Catch the older posts here. A new one will be published in a month.