British beers and clear bottles

How is color a strong selling point? You're not selling TV's, you're selling beer & I can only speak for myself as a beer buying consumer but I can say for certain that color has never factored in to my purchase. smh

 

I&G explanation (excuse?) can be found in their US Importers' Newsletter at:

Why do you guys use clear glass bottles? Are you not worried about light damage?​

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Breweries which use clear glass bottles have typically promoted them by claiming they show the "purity" and "cleanliness" of their product, that the brewer has "nothing to hide". Say, like in this quote from a Miller High Life ad dated 1913:

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There is a bit of irony in the quote that begins this text is from the Wahl-Henius brewing institute (perhaps the most famous brewing school in the US at the time). This ad is clearly in reaction to Millwaukee rival Schlitz's long running series of ads promoting their "Brown Bottle" which often also quoted Wahl-Henius on the causes of lightstruck beer. See Schlitz Brown Bottle ads
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As to the OP - I don't pay a lot of attention to the "macro" aisles, but aren't there still more US beers bottled in clear glass than UK imports (esp. since Samuel Smith went "amber")? Miller High Life, Miller 64, Steel Reserve and Olde English from MillerCoors, Colt 45 and Country Club from Pabst, etc. And doesn't AB put some Bud line-extensions like Bud Ice in clear bottles, along with those flavored Michelob beers, Landshark and some of their malt liquors?

 

Are there any good British beers in clear bottles?

Never come across any personally and even if the current lot GK, IG, OSH, NBA went to brown bottle they'd still be dreadful.

p.s I'm sure i've seen some Innis & Gunn beers boxed so...

 

Me neither, but as the saying goes "you eat with your eyes." There's a whole lotta reviews here that rate appearance, the brewery could argue that the enticing appearance encourages consumption/purchase... but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If someone believes that brown bottles signify a healthy beer then clear bottles would like a diseased gazelle in a herd of better options. Either way, these guys know how to run their business successfully.

 

Point well taken, sir. Just never been a factor in my purchases.

 

Interestingly enough, I never had a skunked New Castle Brown and I drank quite a bit of it. Never had it in a can either, only bottles.

 

In the 60s and 70s returnable bottles, which were used by the Swedish brewing industry, were made in green glass and the intent was to create a protective inner layer for the bottles but this never materialized, so they went back to ordering brown bottles and the remaining green bottles are a remnant of this era. So despite of Sweden's northernly latitude the Swedish breweries were obviously concerned about the potential damage done to beer bottled in green bottles, whilst also acknowledging the commercial benefit of bottling beer in a "novel" package which was attractive to the consumer.

 

The first thing I thought when I read this thread is why are people in the US even bothering to drink this stuff? St Austell are the only semi-decent brewery I can think of who use clear bottles and then it's only for a handful of beers in their range.

 

So do most people think that sunlight is the only type of light that causes problems for beer? I was under the impression; remember reading a graph that someone posted a while back showing that regardless of the source; light in general is bad. The weather in the UK may be shitty, but Im sure their grocery stores have lightbulbs emitting light...

 

Florescent light can be almost as bad as sunlight as far as giving off the light wavelengths in the part of the spectrum that is most damaging to beer - 550 nm and below. Although it generally is said to take longer (hours not minutes) for the beer to become lightstruck - and some stores have clear tubular "UV filters" that slip over the florescent bulbs for added benefit.

Supposedly incandescent light from old fashioned "light bulbs" isn't as damaging.

 

Technically you would lose the bet - I'm a graduate chemist who has handled mercaptans and also in our beer tasting courses we dope beer with small quantities of 3-methylbut-2-ene-1-thiol to simulate skunked beer.So I think I know how it tastes and certainly haven't encountered it in over 50 years of beer drinking. Even when I forget where I've left my pint at barbecues it's warm when I find it but it's never been skunked.
But you're right in the respect that skunks are pretty rare here and I've never seen one

 

Many believe its only UV. Here's a brief article to supplement JKs post. Some wavelengths are worse than others.

http://hwcdn.libsyn.com/p/8/d/d/8dd...78140956&hwt=e3888d5ea9b12f3da2947a806600359d


As for the UV index, it goes basically to 0 in thick overcast weather so those numbers only apply when there is sunlight. :-)

 

Thanks for the additional information.

 

http://hopsteiner.com/pdf/20092/13_07_Tetra.pdf

 

The last time I was in London, it was partly sunny in the summer. I nursed a half pint of light colored summer ale for a fair amount of time, making sure it was in the sun when the sun was shining. Was surprised that there was no skunk aroma (maybe the slightest trace was in the background of the aroma). I have had light colored beers skunk in a minute or two in MI.

When I lived in Germany, I learned to avoid Pilsners in green bottles at the Getrank. Those were always skunky unless you found a fresh shipment.

 

Clear is not a color. Colorless bottles is the correct term. It's the color that filters out certain wavelengths of light, that skunk beer, but you can still see though it (clear). Of course, opaque (all cans and certain painted bottles) is the best since no light goes through.
Opaque > Brown > Green > Colorless. See, I do remember something from science.

 

Within the industry, I've always read/heard them referred to as "white" or "flint" bottles.

For an example of the latter, from the Owens-Illinois (the largest supplier of beer bottles in the US) catalog:

 

The majority of British bottled beer comes in brown bottles. A few breweries, e.g. Greene King, Marstons, Shepherd Neame have a liking for clear bottles, but even they don't necessarily use clear for everything (Greene King do though, I think). There seems to be a tendency for Golden Ales to come in clear bottles, presumably to showcase the colour, but even with them it's far from universal.

I've never had a lot of trouble with clear glass, personally, though I don't buy much stuff in clear bottles.

There is actually some decent enough beer in clear bottles e.g. Abbot Ale, though it rarely leaps out at me from the shelf. I'm very happy to have it from cask though.

 

'Our' [sic] brown bottle technology. That's cute.

There are far more brands of US mainstream beer sold in clear bottles than there are in the UK.

 

BTW, forgot to mention. Its safe to say that a very large proportion of the beer consumed in the UK never sees the inside of a bottle or exposure to light until it is pumped into the glass for consumption. Its much less common there to keep beer around the house since for many the neighborhood pub is just a few blocks down the road.