This is beer you’re talking about. Anybody who gets his feelings hurt because you don’t like his beer is a pussy, plain and simple. My son is always trying to get me to try some new brew from Saipan or Uzbekistan. I usually taste it, ask, “Man, you really like this shit?” and then ask for a Coors. I mean, it’s just beer, fer chrissake!
Wow! That sounds like an education I’d actually pay for. 
I had a bottle of Corona last night, and of course I smelled and tasted it very carefully. I could detect nothing objectionable about the flavor or odor – certainly nothing like skunk spray, burnt rubber, or sulfur. Of course my 12-pack of Corona came in a cardboard box, so its exposure to light was probably minimal.
I’ll leave one out on the patio for a few days and see how it tastes then.
I’m sure not gonna match my beer-fu up against a professional!
I am not going to question what you say, just observing that I used to pay quite close attention to what I drank, and did not perceive skunking as common as you say. It is certainly probable that I have a far less sensitive palate than you.
What brewery, AW? Or, if you don’t want to mention the name, perhaps you could name the region and/or a couple of your more notable brews from past years?
(Damn, I love beer. I just wish I didn’t love so much of it so often!)
I’m not a beer drinker myself (I prefer a good Irish cream), but in memory of my late, beloved grandfather, a dedicated Rolling Rock man (we even buried him with a bottle), I thank you.
Yep. I enjoy sipping a micro-brew once in a while. But don’t generaly buy them. AW seems sincere that he can taste the difference in a beer that has been left under lights for what I consider a tiny amount of time. And he works for a brewery.
Not sure if I should feel sorry for me, or him.
Common opinion, atleast in my little corner, in the UK is that bottled beer is way nicer then cans because it picks up less flavour from glass than metal.
We pay about 10-30% more for the same volume of beer for the glass variety, depending on brand. (My best friend, a stock controller for a major booze distributor, says the differance in making them is negligable, they charge extra coz they can)
Maybe we suffer less shipping time than the US because almost none of our beers are imported. It’s almost all “Brewed under Licence”. Having been a rabid beer drinking for almost ten years I’ve never come accross “Skunked” beer in any part of the UK, in green, brown or clear bottles.
With training, just about anybody can develop a more educated palate when it comes to beer. I’ve been doing BJCP judging for, hell, going on 20 years now. My palate can be hyper-sensitive to flaws in beer. This has its ups and downs. An up is that it doesn’t take me long to judge a beer in competition. I can pinpoint flaws fairly easily. A down is that nobody ever comes up to me and says “Try this beer I just brewed. It’s fantastic!” What I get is “Try this beer I just brewed. I don’t know what I did wrong. Maybe you can pinpoint it.” I’ve tasted more crappy beer than is my share. But I am usually able to narrow down what went wrong, so the person can brew better the next time.
So the next time you have a really good homebrew, thank a BJCP judge somewhere, who sacrificed their palate for your drinking enjoyment! 
The answer to any question that starts “Is there a polite way to educate people…”, assuming said people have not even asked to be informed, much less educated, is a big NOPE.
Tabby
Little aside…This reminds me of a humorous homebrewing story. One day last year, I decided to brew a witbier with a bunch of Door County cherry syrup for my mom. I normally brew IPAs, but mom (and dad) don’t like the aggressive hop bitterness, so I wanted to brew something gentler on the palate, and something I’ve never made before.
Witbier seemed perfect. I make a five-gallon batch, throw it in a primary and take a taste after the end of a week, before racking it into the secondary. “My, this tastes a bit metallic.” So I give my brother a sip. “Tastes like iron,” he says.
As I’m racking the beer, I notice little teeny tiny ball bearings on the bottom of my fermenter. WTF is that? And then it dawns on me. I look over at my floating thermometer and, sure enough, the bottom is cracks, and the little ball bearings that control its buoyancy spilled into the beer. The thing is, this is like a half a teaspoon of ball bearings at the most that made it into the beer. Yet, after one week, it had acquired a distinct metallic taste.
So it doesn’t take much metal to affect the taste of beer, as I’ve learned. (We did end up finishing all the beer, despite its obvious flaws.)
Aluminum cans for carbonated drinks have a lining which prevents metal from leaching into the product. If the beverage were exposed to the aluminum itself, it would cause a hole suprisingly quickly.
The only cite I can find right now is [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_can]here*. There, it says that beer might still taste differently from a can because of oils used in the canning process.
-FrL-
[url=Drink can - Wikipedia]here](Drink can - Wikipedia) I mean.
-FrL-
here I mean.
Sleeman’s beer comes only in clear bottles - and albeit it doesn’t have to travel over an ocean or an international border to reach my beer stores, and I can’t recall having one that’s even been close to skunked.