Does Bottle Color matter?

I have been receiving random bottles from friends all over town and sometimes i get clear bottles and sometimes i get green or brown bottles. I was wondering if it really mattered what color bottles i used. I use to think that a dark beer would go in a darker bottle and vice versa with lighter beers going into clear bottles, but i was not sure if that was more for marketing or tasting. New Castle is a fairly dark beer in a clear bottle.. I just wanted to make sure before i go throwing a wheat beer into a old corona bottle!

As long as your beer is not exposed to light for prolonged periods, it should be fine, keep the bottles in a cardboard box, or covered in a dark room.

Here, enjoy the following video:

http://www.basicbrewing.com/index.php?page=september-14-2007---skunking-beer

When using non-brown bottles you must be more careful to prevent UV rays from getting in the bottles. But, trowing a blanket over them or using a box (like mentioned before) during conditioning is minimal effort if clear and green bottles are most plentiful ...enjoy!

Great thanks for the advice guy's and the video link.

Down under they have started to sell beer in clear bottles in fridges with lighting... they end up getting skunked....
Suggest brown where possible

Has anybody ever tried spray painting green or clear bottles black?

Would that just be too much trouble?

I have heard of people using that plastic safe spray paint to paint 2 liter PET soda bottles.

Cpt_Kirks said:

Has anybody ever tried spray painting green or clear bottles black?

Would that just be too much trouble?

I have heard of people using that plastic safe spray paint to paint 2 liter PET soda bottles.

Click to expand...

IMO it would be hard to get the paint to stick to the glass. For me it would be too time consuming/PITA.

A very lightly hopped beer (corona type) will be less prone to getting "skunked" in a clear bottle than a super hoppy IPA. Brown is best though since as previously mentioned it blocked a lot of the UV light from getting to the hops in the beer.

I would think that painting free glass bottles would be a PITA. I only use brown glass, but like you, I've had friends collecting bottles for me. My wife got me 2 cases of cobalt blue 500ml flip top bottles for Christmas, so I guess I'm using blue now as well. I keep my beer in the basement, away from the window, so it shouldn't matter much anyway.

Flattop said:

Down under they have started to sell beer in clear bottles in fridges with lighting... they end up getting skunked....
Suggest brown where possible

Click to expand...

I never understood that facination with clear bottles - most importantly, it's way too easy to skunk the beer. Secondary to that, from a marketing perspective they're a nightmare. If they sit on a shelf for any period of time you can see all the dust/dirt that accumulated on the bottle very clearly. Additionally, if you use painted bottles (think Corona) every scratch and scuff mark clearly shows. From a commerical standpoint, it just seems like a nightmare.

I've often found that bottles of Stella Artois and Henieken taste skunked to me and I've attributed it to the green bottles. Yet, I see so many people drinking these that I'm starting to think they're supposed to taste this way. When I was in Belgium a few years back visiting breweries, I thought I might try a bottle of either (or both) and see if there was a difference in taste, but honestly I was having way too much fun trying unique and well-crafted beers at places like Cantillon, DDB, Huyghe, Brasserie d Vapeur, Dupont, and Rodenbach amongst others. I think I found plenty of good reasons to avoid Heiniken or any of the InBev products. :rockin:

(And at the risk of wandering off topic: Yes, as you can imagine, it was an awesome trip. Four of us who used to work together and loved beer went - we left the women at home, and spent 10 days based out of a hotel in Brussels. The trip was centered around being at Cantillon on their open-brew day. We spent the entire day there, from the time they started early in the morning, until the evening when they were pumping the wort in to the open-air copper cooling tray in the attic. Each morning we'd wake up, have a big breakfast, then head out to a WWI or WWII museum, battlefield, something... then after lunch we'd decide we had our culture for the day and hit the brewery(ies) in the town we had driven to. And yes, while a trip to Europe with the girlfriend would have been fun in its own right, I know that by day 3 I'd be hearing, "We're going to ANOTHER brewery?" )

I highly doubt any beer is supposed to have a skunky taste. My understanding is that the skunk factor comes from the hops reacting to UV light. I doubt breweries would do this on purpose. I still don't know why anyone would use a clear bottle though...
or green for that matter. Unless they're stored in a sealed boxed in cool dark place.

I was in Amersterdam for a week last year with my wife and 4 friends. Was a great trip and we did visit the old Heneiken brewery there, it is now a museum for tours no active brewing. What I can say is that the heiniken, amstel and grolsch tasted amazing everywhere we went in Amsterdam. It is pretty much all they have on tap in that city (unless you want a weiss beer, they always had a house weiss and sometimes the german dunkel lager König Ludwig Dunkel .

Anyway I can fully attest to the Dutch beers being some of the cleanest tasting pils out there when getting it in their native land. After going to Amsterdam 2 times in the last year I can say it is always disappointing to get back to the states and try one of the dutch beers here, usually have bitter tastes, tannic tastes sometimes and once awhile plain skunk. I never order it anymore, after drinking it from the fount it is always a disappointment. Wish they would go to brown bottles! Oh and they don't have the stupid light beer over there either, and that tastes like crap and was made to appeal to bud light drinkers is my guess.

I spent some time in belgium as well but was in very touristy Bruges area and had many a beer in various cafes, all were good, didn't note what they specifically were though, but the belgians take pride in every beer having a particular vessal to drink from, but america definatly is starting to have even more variety and quality brew than the belgians, even if we put all of them into pint glasses...

Oh and lucky me my wife likes beer as much as I do, she would complain to me for dragging her to museums and battlefields (which I would) and would look forward to the breweries. When we went to london she was always annoyed with me wanted to go to some historic site or museum, when she just wanted to try out all the various local bitters in the variously funny named pubs all over london. I am a lucky man.

Zenman said:

Oh and they don't have the stupid light beer over there either, and that tastes like crap and was made to appeal to bud light drinkers is my guess.

Click to expand...

Phillip Van Munching wrote a book some years ago called "Beer Blast." If you haven't read it, find a copy - it's rather amusing. See how Van Munching & Co. felt about the idea of Heinekin light... (Basically, "PLEASE DON'T SEND US CRAP LIKE THAT TO DISTRIBUTE FOR YOU!")

Zenman said:

Oh and lucky me my wife likes beer as much as I do, she would complain to me for dragging her to museums and battlefields (which I would) and would look forward to the breweries. When we went to london she was always annoyed with me wanted to go to some historic site or museum, when she just wanted to try out all the various local bitters in the variously funny named pubs all over london. I am a lucky man.

Click to expand...

You are, indeed.