What constitutes skunked?

Or yet in other words: is the fundamental issue people are correctly identifying off flavors but unable to ascribe the proper terminology? Or is it that they can’t identify off flavors? Or, more likely, is it both of these things and therefore the problem isn’t that “skunked” isn’t an accurate enough term, its over misuse is merely a symptom of it being a commonly known term and synergistic with heat being bad for beer being widely known (having nothing at all to do with the severity of said issue).

 

Larry,

Was there ever a period of time where Genny Cream Ale was the 'it' beer in the area of your youth?

Cheers!

 

No - never really caught on, but I do remember drinking it once in a while along with the 12 horse (because I liked the label...). They were both "a cut above" if I remember right. Back in those "darker" days, literally anything would do, so the memories are a bit fuzzy... I remember Rolling Rock being a quick fad at some point in time.

 

Since I grew up in Pennsylvania this beer was not a fad but a regular standby. I drank a lot (and I do mean a lot) of Rolling Rock in my youth (before the microbrewery/craft beer revolution).

Cheers!

 

I've learned quite a lot from this thread and realize I've used the term "skunky" incorrectly countless times in the past. There is a quality to a large percentage of 1990's and 2000's IPAs that I've experienced mostly in the tasting (not so much the nose) that I would often, for lack of a better term, call skunky as it was hard for me to define or pin down and I didn't know the cause.

It was why I didn't like IPAs at all for a while, as most fell in this category (at least on the west coast). Musty would be the next best word I could come up with but doesn't fit the bill either. Not simply bitter, not lager or Belgian yeast, and I don't believe it's bready or biscuity as I never found it with ambers or other beers described to be especially malty. I did over time discover that the best of the IPAs of that day lacked this taste and while I still find one occasionally, it is far more rare.

So with that pile of vague bs, does anyone want to take a guess and provide me with a better adjective? Thanks!

 

Common IPA aroma and taste descriptors are piney, earthy, grassy, floral, and citrusy. I could see the combination of piney and earthy being similar to musty. In the 90's and 00's era you mentioned the West Coast IPAs in particular tended to be more piney, earthy and grassy, but today most IPAs tend to the citrusy and floral spectrums.

Also, certain hops are known for imparting a "cat piss" aroma, which seems related to musty. Simcoe hops are particularly noteable for this flavor, and were commonly used in the 90's and 00's, but have fallen out of favor recently (I can't imagine why ).

EDIT: Another common descriptor is "dank" as in like marijuana, which could be related to musty.

 

That's funny... reminds me the reputation Guinness has. Tell the average [non-beer geek] person that Guinness is a "light" beer and watch their heads pop.


IMO, fresh, non-skunked Heineken is very good, and I would choose it over many "craft" beers... fresh and non-skunked is the tricky part though.

 

Thanks for taking a stab at it. Musty is probably a poor adjective. My favorite IPAs have traditionally been Simcoe and/or Citra heavy, with Mosaic in the last couple years as it spread. I prefer the severely piney and dank aspects of these, but perhaps there were simply breweries who used inferior or old hops or used them poorly and it was more a problem with processing?

Looking back through some of my reviews I had only given that descriptor to
3 Floyds Gumballhead which is a Pale Wheat Ale and more recently Fremont's Sky Kraken though before I started jotting down notes there were many more. Thanks again.

 

You're probably talking about the dank character of some of the hops used in west coast IPAs? Dank as a sensory description is really just describing cannabis aroma; hops and cannabis have a ton of overlap in their terpene profile.

That smell (which definitely has aspects of both skunk and musty) shows up in a lot of IPAs that aren't using the newest tropical hops (i.e. almost every IPA before 2011-2012).

If you're wondering exactly what compound gives off that aroma, the answer is a very unsatisfying "several." It's a combinatorial result of beta pinene, caryophyllene oxide, myrcene, and a few other terpenes. None of them smell like that if you purify them and smell them by themselves. Cannabis smells more like that because it has a couple compounds that hops don't, but every once in a while you'll come across a bag of hop pellets that smells indistinguishable from a big sticky bag of weed. Other things that contain a lot of terpenes will occasionally smell dank - even orange juice can sometimes take on that aroma.

 

I remember watching a video on Youtube called "Cholos try craft beer" or something, and the first thing they said after smelling an IPA is "this shit smells like pot!"

Strangely, its also the same way my underarms smell after not showering for a day...

 

Again I appreciate it, but what I’m struggling with here is not dankness (have my familiarity with weed ), and again not on the smell. only the taste, and more likely
mid-taste to after taste. So hard to describe. I feel it’s more likely the yeast or something but it is not quite the same as that lager flavor (also not much a fan of lagers though)...

 

Huh. Well, if you can give me a bit more to go on we can probably figure it out. Also, your difficulty is not unusual - effectively and accurately describing tastes and smells is actually really hard and something that people train for months or years to be able to do. It doesn't come naturally.

 

Thanks a lot. Unfortunately I didn’t take good enough notes in that time period. Fremont Sky Kraken is my most recent example if you can find it in Oregon. Otherwise it will remain a mystery for me. Thanks again!

 

Even using a specific beer brand as a ‘baseline’ can be challenging since everybody’s palate is different.

I took note that you enjoy drinking beers hopped with Simcoe and Citra (as do I) but some people ‘react’ to these hops with a perception of “cat pee”. Below is something I posted on this topic in a past thread:

“One aspect that Simcoe and Citra have in common is that they are high in a compound called 4-mercapto-4-methyl-2-pentanone (4MMP). I have read that some folks are genetically predisposed to perceive high(er) levels of 4MMP as smelling/tasting like cat piss.

I have homebrewed with Simcoe a lot and more often than not the predominant aroma/flavor of that hop for my palate is pine. I have brewed with Citra a few times and that hop has always come off as tropical fruit for my palate but I had friends who drank my IPA that featured Citra as being Cat Piss. The thing that I found to be remarkable is that they actually requested second bottles of this beer!!”

Cheers!

 

had the 'pleasure' of buying a few nice English Ales in clear bottles, that was completely skunked,

one shop had 2 sides of glass, facing the sun, and swore the Old Speck I was buying was newly stocked,
it may have been but it was skunked somewhere,

after a few different ales in clear bottles, (I was in the grocery business then) I bought direct from the beer guys, and by the case, unopened,

Hen's Tooth was hard to get, and did not want that to be skunked,

 

Skunked to me is going fishing and not catching anything. Other than maybe a buzz assuming the cooler came too.