Light bulb light and fermentation

quick question, will the lightbulbs from my normal room light skunk my fermenter?
thanks for any info

AFAIK only sunlight can skunk beer.

awesome thanks

The skunked Newcastle I've gotten suggests that fluorescent lights can do it as well.

keep UV light away from your beer.

well this is a stupid question but do light bulbs put off uv light

if you are at all worried about UV just toss a blanket over your carboy, then RDWHAHB

JBrady said:

well this is a stupid question but do light bulbs put off uv light

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not unless you get the ones that make white look like it's glowing

oh by the way, I use a 125w heat lamp in my fermentation chamber for this winter and have done one of my best beers with that light

Incandescent light bulbs do not produce UV, however, fluorescent do. No where near as much as the sun do though. A quick wikipedia search shows that 8 hours of exposure to fluorescent light is equivalent to 1 minute of sun exposure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorescent_lamp#Health_and_safety_issues

I keep the fluorescents off near my fermenters. I don't worry about incandescents.

Will the new energy efficient spiral bulbs effect frementation?

Compact fluorescents put out a small amount of UV (same as what was said above), but it wouldn't be enough to effect fermentation unless you had it the bulb pointed right at it for hours everyday (like, say, in a display cooler in your liquor store). Just having it in a room and turning the light on while you're in there won't do a thing. Toss a towel over it (as was said above) if it reassures you, though.

I have used the big black plastic leaf bags to cover my fermenter, just for peace of mind.

That's it. I'm going to invent the Carboy Snuggie. No more worries about any light hitting your fementing beer.

Someone did a study on ambient room lighting (fluorescent and incandescent) and found that fluorescent room lighting really wasn't enough to worry about, given that (among other things) the very small amount of UV from fluorescents only comes into contact with whatever beer is against the walls of the carboy at any given time.

But I figure, what the heck, it's not a big bother to protect from even that small amount, so I do it.