Infra red light

[Satellitemark]

Hi All,
I store my beer in my workshop, as it's dark and cool, however a thought has occurred, I have a CCTV camera and it uses infra red light to illuminate when there is no light on in there around 90% of the time, it infra red light likely to damage my beer stock ?

Most of it is in dark brown glass bottle of that makes any difference.

Mark

 

[MmmBeer]

Brown glass should keep out any light from skunking your beer.

 

[Satellitemark]

Brown glass should keep out any light from skunking your beer.

I hope so, thanks for the reply.
Do you or anyone else know if infra red is as damaging as normal daylight to unprotected beer ?

Mark

 

[An Ankoù]

I hope so, thanks for the reply.
Do you or anyone else know if infra red is as damaging as normal daylight to unprotected beer ?

Mark

I understand it's the UV end of the visible spectrum that causes skunking so you should be ok. Nevertheless, I try to keep all mt bottles covered.
Has anybody actually experienced this "skunking"? I must say I haven't. Before I got my kit up and running here I drank quite a few 66s of Heineken in green bottles kept on the top shelf in the supermarket under fluorescent lights. Never tasted anything amiss- not that Heineken's brilliant by any means, but it's better than Fischer Tradition even if that does come in brown, swing-top bottles.

 

[Satellitemark]

Thanks for the reply, interesting stuff.
I have to say this forum is brilliant, two replies within minutes, thanks guys !

Mark

 

[-Bezza-]

I don't think the infrared used by cameras can pass through glass, otherwise our CCTV cameras would be spying on the neighbours at night.

 

[MmmBeer]

Some commercial breweries use a post fermentation product containing tetra-iso-alpha acid compounds (tetra hop) instead of using raw hops in the boil. This has some anti-microbial advantages, but also protects against light striking or skunking, allowing the beer to be sold in clear or green bottles.

Tetrahop Gold® 1LT

 

[Cwrw666]

I've never knowingly experienced `skunked' beer though I'd never buy a bottle of beer that had been in a shop's window display. I'd be surprised if a shop's interior lighting would be a problem but actual daylight, especially direct sunlight may well be.
I store all my beer in solid wooden crates with a cardboard lid, or cardboard boxes as I have a liking for green bottles if only because it's a lot easier to fill them if you can actually see the level of beer inside!

Maybe I should sacrifice a bottle or 2 in an experiment.

 

[foxbat]

I've never knowingly experienced `skunked' beer

If you've ever sat in a beer garden in the summer sun and taken too long to drink your beer, skunked is what that last bit in the glass tastes like.

 

[Cwrw666]

If you've ever sat in a beer garden in the summer sun and taken too long to drink your beer, skunked is what that last bit in the glass tastes like.

Never experienced that. Never had a problem with taking too long to drink beer...

 

[Bill_g]

Although I don't actually know the answer, applying a bit of science it's possible to come to a realistic expectation ....
When the sun is high in the sky and on a very clear day then the total energy density across the whole spectrum is around 800W per square metre in the UK i.e. brighter by several factors of 10 than any normal artificial lighting. Your IR camera probably illuminates your whole shed with less than 1W of light I would think. So we are talking about light energy density much much lower than daylight.
Also the photons of ultra violet light carry more energy and generally speaking are the most damaging. For example it's these frequencies that cause sunburn and what solar panels utilise to generate electricity. Infra red energy from the sun would warm your beer bottles but the heating effect of your camera light is of course absolutely immeasurably small. Incidentally I've just done a quick test & brown glass transmits red light quite well so I doubt that glass colour would help much for IR.
So unless something really unexpected is happening I'd say there's zero chance that your IR camera will cause a problem.

Regarding sitting in the sun and having your beer skunked ... I'm totally astonished that anyone on this forum can drink a pint that slowly!

 

[-Bezza-]

This is what a man on the internet said:

It depends on two things: What are the specific wavelengths of IR light (infrared covers a fairly wide spectrum), and what type of glass and what coatings are on it?

Near infrared (NIR) and Short-Wave Infrared (SWIR) will pass through most glass, though the amount will vary based on the glass and the specific wavelengths within those bands.

Mid-Wave Infrared (MWIR) and Long-Wave Infrared (LWIR) are blocked by most glass. This is the wavelength of IR light that thermal cameras use, so contrary to what the movies would have you believe, thermal infrared cameras cannot see through glass.

This isn’t an absolute rule. Some types of glass are more transparent to IR than others. Sapphire is transparent to most wavelengths of IR all the way down to MWIR wavelengths, so cooled thermal cameras can see through sapphire.

 

[steve123]

I’d never given much thought to skunking before, I was never overly conscious about keeping them covered and mainly kept bottles in the garage, which only has a small window. Recently I drank 2 bottles, they were from the same batch and both tasted totally different, one from a clear bottle and one from a brown bottle. Both had been kept on an open cupboard in the kitchen.

the difference was clearly the effects of skunking. The skunked bottle didn’t taste particularly bad but couldn’t believe they were from the same batch.

I now keep them on a shelf in the garage with a cover over them

 

[steve123]

Some commercial breweries use a post fermentation product containing tetra-iso-alpha acid compounds (tetra hop) instead of using raw hops in the boil. This has some anti-microbial advantages, but also protects against light striking or skunking, allowing the beer to be sold in clear or green bottles.

Tetrahop Gold® 1LT

I’d always wondered why some companies bottled in clear bottles, whilst kept on a shelf in a shop

 

[Clint]

I've never knowingly experienced `skunked' beer though I'd never buy a bottle of beer that had been in a shop's window display. I'd be surprised if a shop's interior lighting would be a problem but actual daylight, especially direct sunlight may well be.
I store all my beer in solid wooden crates with a cardboard lid, or cardboard boxes as I have a liking for green bottles if only because it's a lot easier to fill them if you can actually see the level of beer inside!

Maybe I should sacrifice a bottle or 2 in an experiment.

This is my favourite green bottle..found in a field. Probably from 1800's..

 

[foxbat]

I’d always wondered why some companies bottled in clear bottles, whilst kept on a shelf in a shop

Apparently they use a modified hop extract that doesn't suffer from the problem instead of traditional hops. There's a good informative page on it here.

 

[Bill_g]

This subject set a bit of a hare running in my mind ... I think, but I'm not sure, that beer bottles have been brown since the early days of commercial beer brewing (anyone know?). So I'd imagine the effect of sunlight ruining beer has been known for a long time. That set me to thinking when would beer in bottels get most exposed to light and I reckon it would be on the horse drawn dray as it was carted off to pubs in surrounding towns & villages in the height of summer.
I suspect that now 'skunking' has become one of the many homebrew 'old wives tales' and in practice just not worth giving a second thought as long as your beer is kept out of direct sunlight for storage.
... just a thought really - does anyone know a source of more historical details?

PS. Sorry hadn't seen the above link - 1870, 3-methyl-2-butene-1-thiol (yum yum) and almost instantaneous and caused by UV not IR

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I hope so, thanks for the reply.
Do you or anyone else know if infra red is as damaging as normal daylight to unprotected beer ?

The reaction happens fastest in the blue region of visible light, 350-500nm - and that's exactly the region that's blocked by brown glass but (mostly) goes through green glass. See this article for detail, although it's a little bit old now : https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285025989_Beer_lightstruck_flavor_The_full_story (full article free with signup)

So don't worry about your CCTV camera. And just as a general rule of thumb, it's only UV that usually has enough energy to make chemical reactions happen, this one's kind of unusual in that it goes down into the visible spectrum. With infrared, you're generally only worried about a general warming effect - but in the case of a camera that warming effect is utterly minuscule and irrelevant to your beer.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I suspect that now 'skunking' has become one of the many homebrew 'old wives tales' and in practice just not worth giving a second thought as long as your beer is kept out of direct sunlight for storage.
... just a thought really - does anyone know a source of more historical details?

It's definitely not an old-wives' tale, you can see it for yourself - it actually happens pretty quickly in full sun. If you bottle some pale-ish beer with not too much going on flavourwise in clear bottles, and leave one in the dark and one on a sunny windowsill for half an hour, you should be able to tell the difference.

Obviously one isn't going to keep beer in full sun, but half an hour in the sun might be the equivalant of less than a day on a table away from the window. I wouldn't get too paranoid about it, but cool and dark is always going to be the best way to store bottled beer.

 

[Satellitemark]

Brilliant information guys , many thanks.

Mark