Sam Calagione and skunky homebrew?

[Osborne]

I'm watching Beer Wars and I notice Sam has his clear carboy of beer on his kitchen counter in front of a window with the morning sun hitting it? Wouldn't this cause it to become light struck/skunky? Not to mention the additional heat...

 

[Beernik]

Three words: made for tv. A clear carboy sitting one a table in the bright sunshine makes a pretty picture.

Also, I think there to too much fear of skunkiness. I sat a clear bottle in the summer sun for an hour and did a blind taste test to compare it to one from a brown bottle that stayed in my cellar. I couldn't detect the difference.

 

[drainbamage]

Yeah, I'm thinking setpiece. I doubt Sam does his actual homebrewing that way.

Ask @Psylocide about beer skunking experiments.

 

[Psylocide]

Beer will skunk in a matter of 10-15 mins in direct sunlight.

This is a good, if not extremely over detailed write up on the chemical reaction, but it happens very quickly.

https://beersensoryscience.wordpress.com/2011/03/17/lightstruck/

Not that it's completely undesirable, if you want to drink some HB Corona or a St. Pauli and experiment to get the recipe right, it's a neat trick. Especially since you can have two completely different tasting brews if you skunk a portion and leave the rest alone.

Good gateway/slamming brew.

 

[Brewernaut51]

Back when that originally aired he got slammed pretty hard about that. He said they just lifted it up there for TV because it looked better than sitting a dark corner. I imagine one of the directors or cameramen put him up to it.

 

[ram5ey]

Yeah he talked about it on the brewing network when that came out.

 

[ElJefeBrews]

Isn't Sam a Siebel graduate? I'm pretty sure he would know better. I agree it sure looks better than being covered by a shirt in your closet. I just hope somebody just getting into homebrewing doesn't see that and think that's how It's done. They'll find out quickly that it's not.