Light skunking when home brewing

[Brewmeister1988]

Hey everybody,

I have a question concerning light and how much of it that it takes to ruin beer. So I'm at the point where my beer has been bottled and it has been sitting in the basement in a dark room for about 2 weeks. The beer is an Irish stout and it hasn't been introduced to any light unit today when my ******* brother went in the room and left the light on. The beer had been exposed to light for about 10 hours. They were bottled in far bottles, but I just am wondering if this would ruin the beer or not? The light was a single canned fluorescent.

 

[Brewmeister1988]

Meant to say, they were bottled in dark bottles

 

[Calder]

Dark bottles provide decent protection ....... but don't push it to extremes. Bottles can sit on store shelves for weeks (or longer) with no detrimental effects from light. Just be wary of using clear or green bottles.

It is something in the hops that light changes. Stouts usually don't have too many hops.


You can edit your own post if you see a mistake in it.

 

[Cyclman]

Brown bottles you'll be fine. There are some great tests showing brown bottles are rather good at blocking beer skunking light: http://www.wired.com/2013/03/physics-and-green-beer-bottles/

 

[Hammy71]

Isn't a big deal at all. In brown bottles it will be fine. Guess your brother can use a flash light to navigate the basement...LOL But, in the future if your really paranoid, pick up some beer boxes and store the bottles in them.

 

[AlCophile]

Checkout BrewChem 101, by Janson, pp 73, 74. Try Amazon. The light is of 400 to 520 nm, or ultraviolet, and it can happen in seconds.

 

[unionrdr]

The UV light reacts with the hop oils to create a compound very similar to skunk spray.

 

[mike_g08]

I once skunked some homebrew bottled in a corona bottle, deliberately. Just took a few minutes in the bright sunshine, and.....instant imported pils!

 

[bbohanon]

I once skunked some homebrew bottled in a corona bottle, deliberately. Just took a few minutes in the bright sunshine, and.....instant imported pils!

Thats the "Homebrew To Heineken" process right there.
:fro:

 

[Brewmeister1988]

Thanks for the quick responses. I think the beer should still be ok since it was in dark bottles. Also, the bottles weren't introduced to too much light. Probably just 1200 lumens at the most

 

[RM-MN]

It isn't the length of time or the brightness of the light that matters, it's the amount of UV that the beer receives that matter. Most home lighting doesn't emit much UV (have you ever gotten a tan by sitting in your living room?) and the amount the beer receives depends too on the distance from the light source as the intensity goes down quickly with distance (inverse square law given a point source). By itself, even clear glass will reduce the amount of UV and the brown bottles reduce it much more. Your beer will be just fine.