Green beer bottles?

Is there some inherent quality of green beer bottles that makes the beer taste like ass? I have heard that it does play some role, but I can’t seem to remember the source. I think it may have something to do with the light?

All I know is that I would gladly take a PBR over a Rolling Rock anyday.

Also, my mom just got back from the west coast with some sake in a green bottle. Admittedly, I have only had sake on one other occassion, and it was good. However, it was in a brown, much more opaque bottle. Should I expect a difference?

I would take a PBR over most beers any day, because the only thing PBR reeks of is awesomeness.

From what I’ve heard, theres something about light (maybe UV rays in particular) that can negatively affect the taste of beer (read: cause it to taste like ass). Usually, companies that decide to market their beer in green bottles take special precautions to ensure that their beer is exposed to the smallest amount of light possible.
I have no idea if this is true, or if it pertains to other alcoholic, non-beer beverages. All i know is that my ** stella ** is in a green bottle and it tastes FAN-tastic. Surely some other dopers can expand on this.

We’ve had this discussion before, with some rancor. The basics are: UV degrades and skunks beer and the hops therein. Brown bottle filter out more of these rays than do green bottles, which in turn are better than clear bottles. The reason Miller doesn’t skunk is because they treat their hops to remove the necessary skunkiness chemicals. Freshness counts as well. But if you put the same beer in clear, green, and brown bottles and let it set in sunlight for a period of time, the clear glass beer will skunk the worse, followed by the green. This has been proven time and time again. Hell, I’ve done the demo myself for novices in our brewclub.

UV rays can cause the hop compounds in beer to oxidize. Brown tinted glass is best at blocking the skunking UV rays. However a green bottle of beer stored in a dark cool place shouldn’t skunk to any great extent.

Lugging a case across country in the trunk of a car at 90 might. :slight_smile:

90 degrees that is.

Or what silenus said.

Beer snob here.

The only green-bottled beer I drink with any regularity is Heineken (incidentally, also the only beer I drink with any regularity that anyone outside of Texas has even heard of :cool:). I’ve never noticed any additional skunkiness or other problems with the green bottles.

Ick, clear bottles. Look up “skunky beer” in the dictionary and there should be a picture of that foul, noxious stuff they push on spring break wankers who don’t know any better- Corona.

Of course, packaging isn’t going to improve shite like that. It’s notorious.

if it’s true that green bottles inherently cause problems, why would brewers continue to use them?

Your lucky. I like Heineken…a lot. But I can’t remember how many times I’ve opened a bottle of it only to get smacked with the grungy aroma of wood pussy.:mad:
I’ve had the same experience with Lowenbrau, also in green bottles.

With that said, I’ve noticed that I’ve only gotten skunky beer when it was beer I’ve bought at the store, never from one in a bar/restaurant. So age counts for much.
I’m thinking the lights inside the coolers at the store are to blame.

I saw one (extremely lame) Food Network special where Gordon Elliott interviewed someone at a Stella shipping plant. He said that their bottles had some sort of special coating to keep out UV light. I found this claim extremely dubious at the time, and I haven’t come across a single bit of corroboration for it since then. Has anyone else heard of this?

Over in Copenhagen I had Tuborg Grøn in a not just green, but green plastic bottle. With a kind of pull-tab cap. The brew itself is basically lawnmower beer, but it was provided gratis in my furnished apartment and it was unusually hot in Copenhagen at the time, so the memory is a pleasant one.

Yes.

An organization called CSIRO based in Australia is marketing it under the name “Bottle Magic.” You can read a little more about it here.

Whether it actually works or not I haven’t a clue, but I don’t see why it couldn’t.

I like Corona OK. I prefer beer, though.

Cool, thanks for the information.

That is an excellent question that vexes me every time I have to dump the last 3 bottles from a 6 pack of DAB or Pilsner Urquell because they were exposed to 4 minutes of light.

Brown bottles are not perfect either. In tests I’ve done here I’ve noticed detectable levels of “skunkiness” in brown-bottled beer from as little as 22 hours of exposure to ambient fluorescent light. Much better than beer in clear or green bottles, or in a clear glass sitting on the picnic table, which can go skunky in 5 minutes of exposure to sunlight.

The lesson is, if you are at the tavern and the beer cooler is one of those glass fronted ones with fluorescent lights, have a draft beer.

Budweiser Budvar (the Czech beer, not the Anheuser-Busch product) is in green bottles, and it is significantly better than, well, every beer mentioned so far in this thread.

Assuming, of course, that you get it fresh. Throw it on a freighter churning across the Atlantic and then trucked across 2000 km to a badly built freezer unit and we’ll see how that goes.

One can only assume that some manufacturers (I hesitate to use the term ‘brewer’ for any concoction named in this thread) want their product to be skunky.

I know you guys are going to hate this…
But I don’t tend to get this problem. I drinks me beers from a can. You know what they say… from the can, into the man.