I’ve just come from the beer tasting panel seminar at the Beer Bloggers Conference, where a number of common off-flavours in beer were demonstrated to the assembled beer bloggers. I asked a question about ‘lightstruck’ or ‘skunked’ beer, namely, since the science behind this flavour fault is understood (UV light reacting with hop compounds), why do brewery companies persist in doing the one thing that is guaranteed to cause this fault: packaging beer into clear glass bottles.
A representative from Shepherd Neame told me that it was because people drink with their eyes and that beer in clear glass bottles sold more, and that in their Whitstable Bay beer lightstruck was a component of the flavour profile.
At this point beer bloggeuse Melissa Cole waded in on my side asking him whether if he was really happy to make his product inferior in order to sell more of it. A marketing guy , whose name badge I didn’t see, then waded in to say that his company - and it must have been a large one - had commissioned market research about their beer brand (in a clear glass bottle) and this told them that 50% of people couldn’t detect lightstruck and of those who could 25% liked it as it reminded them of foreign holidays. This, he seemed to think was a clincher. If the consumer likes it it must be alright.
I just admit I was flummoxed for a second or two and then the moment had passed. He had a point, but not a very good one. Sure there is nothing wrong with supplying what the customer wants, but that wasn’t what he was saying. He was saying the consumer likes it so it’s good. No it isn’t.
OK, a lot of people like his lightstruck beer. So what? A lot of people like KFC; but the people at KFC don’t pretend they’re practicing haute cuisine. A lot of French winemakers make vin de pays. There’s nothing wrong with that. What they don’t do is pretend that it’s in the same league as Bordeaux. Shepherd Neame’s conference man and the big brewery marketing man are claiming that their lightstruck beer is as good as any non-lightstruck beer because sufficient numbers of consumers who don’t understand the quality issue at stake like it. Sorry guys. This won’t do. Your beer is inferior, and here’s why.
No brewery in the world, to the best of my knowledge deliberately lightstrikes its beer. No one has an ‘in-line lightstriker’. They don’t keep it in the brewery until it is sufficiently lightstruck to make it confirm to its ‘flavour profile’. They make a normal beer but just don’t care if it does get lightstruck provided it sells. Therefore when you buy a bottle it may or may not be lightstruck, which means it is inconsistent.
I’ve never met anyone in the brewing industry who didn’t accept that consistency is the sine qua non of beer quality. Until today, maybe. If Mr Shepherd Neame Representative says that lightstruck is a characteristic of his Whitstble Bay beer and you then buy a bottle that miraculously hasn’t picked up this flavour fault then it must be outside specification, and consequently wrong from his point of view. We’re moving into a surreal world are we not?
In short, whether or not lightstruck is liked or disliked by the public, beer that packaged to be susceptible to skunking is, by definition, inconsistent and inconsistent beer is inferior. Ergo beer in clear glass is inferior.
In the beer world we are constantly being exhorted to look to the world of wine for inspiration as to how to promote beer or improve its image. Well here’s a good opportunity to take a leaf from that book. Not all wine is equal. Vin de Pays is inferior to Vintage Bordeaux, for the same reason that the best KFC outlet is never going to win a MIchelin star. French winemakers and fast-order chefs everywhere accept this. Why then do we have to pretend that all beers are intrinsically equal? They are not.
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