Anyone actually get skunked beers from carboys stored in a room with a lamp?

I am out of space for carboys so I put them in a closet. Well, I have a friend staying with me and he turns the closet light on (about 65 watts) and leaves the closet on for 2 days and I realize this now. It was 6 carboys with no other light source except for the light bulb.

Did I just ruin all of my beer? I need some sort of "it's going to be okay" before I keg 6 beers, carb and hope they're alright.

"it's going to be okay".

A standard incandescent light will not harm your beer. It's the UV that skunks.

I thought incandescent lights give off UV light...

freisste said:

I thought incandescent lights give off UV light...

Click to expand...

Doing a lot of googling, it looks like all past HBT threads say it doesn't. I should have searched first.

BUT, clarification. This is a fluorescent light bar not incandescent and there are people saying that DOES cause skunking. Maybe I'm out of luck.


Can I sample one of the beers that's finished to test this out? What sort of taste will it exhibit?

It will noticeably taste like you'd imagine skunk spray tastes like. It smells the same. I have had a beer skunked by an incandecsent bulb in a ferm chamber (highly reflected all around) but the light was on much longer then I originally realized. There were two beer in there, a hefe and an Imperial IPA, but only the imperial took on notable skunking. It was a hop bomb to start with and the carboy was loaded with dryhops when the UV exposure took place...but the Hefe exhibited very little from the same incident.

You're probably fine, and you'll know for sure when you taste it pre-rack.

Under the Wiki article for CFLs, it illustrates that the UV output of a CFL is very very low compared to direct sunlight.

It states that it takes exposure to a CFL at 20 centimeters for a "long period of time" to equal the same amount of UV exposure from direct sunlight that cause issues for people with skin conditions that are adverse to UV exposure.

That pretty much illustrates that the UV output isn't going to skunk your beer unless you have months and months of exposure.

Take this with a grain of salt, i'm new to brewing. I've heard that light causes the hops to have skunky aroma. I do not think that it will effect the taste... Im not positive, so hopefully some experts will tell you if the taste is effected.

RDWHAHB, i think the sun has much more intense rays than a lightbuld bespite it being on for 2 days...

99% certain it will be OK. I have always thought that fears of skunking were way overblown. I mean, storing beer in direct sunlight can lead to skunked beer. But I ferment in my brew room all the time during the winter when it is cooler, and it has 2-75W halogen floods in ceiling cans pointed straight down. The lights are usually on evenings and weekends, and fermenting in carboys has not resulted in any skunking.

It will be more noticeable if it was a high hop brew. It will not come out much in the taste, mostly in the smell.
Skunk in the nose like the common green bottle import. Skunking can happen as fast as 15minutes.
Blue-Green (490-500 nm wavelength) is the most damaging, warmer color light bulbs like the old school tungsten bulbs are half as intense as sunlight.

Some good info here:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/wiki/index.php/Skunking

And here:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/wo...-using-green-clear-bottles-329993/index2.html\