Can you skunk wine

Burnham is a writer, oenophile and East Coast native who followed the lure of the grape to California. She has spent over a decade in the wine industry, soaking up both knowledge and wine and then writing about it.

Why Does Wine Go Bad? Left unchecked, wine becomes undrinkable. Tastes like sauerkraut : Lactic acid bacteria gone wild gives this nose-wrinkling smell. Has a strong vinegar quality : This is the smell of volatile acidity and acetic acid, which usually develops in wine after exposure to oxygen. But rogue yeasts can create this flaw in the winery. TCA stands for 2,4,6-Trichloroanisole, which is a harmless, potent-smelling compound that most often occurs when chlorine-based cleaners come into contact with wood.

Even in minute amounts as in parts per trillion , it can affect the way a wine smells and tastes. If present in a barrel or winery equipment, entire lots of wine can be affected— meaning the cork is not always the culprit. Smells of rotten eggs, onions, cabbage : Wines that got too little oxygen during the winemaking process can develop volatile sulfur compounds, including ones called mercaptans. Fortunately, this flaw often disappears shortly after the wine is opened.

Tastes like chemicals: A flawed fermentation can give off a strong paint thinner or acetone scent. Sadly, nothing can help make a wine with this flaw taste better. Oxygen seeped in and ruined it. Oxidation happens eventually to all opened wine. The appearance of fizz or bubbles in a still wine: Whoops, your wine has started to re-ferment. Someone bottled a wine without sterilization, and the yeasts began munching on leftover sugar. Probably not, but it may expedite the aging process, which becomes accelerated by exposing wine to higher temperatures.

In addition to temperature and time, a key factor is the wine itself. Better-made wines tend to withstand extreme temperatures and other adverse conditions better than cheap wines, while still maintaining their character.

Higher fruit concentration, acids and tannins not only give wine balance and depth, but they can protect it from the elements while in the bottle. While it showed a bit more age than it should have, the bottle was still quite enjoyable.

However, I have also had more recent vintages of lighter Pinot Grigio or Sauvignon Blanc at restaurants where it was obvious that they were stored in in too warm conditions and had clearly passed their prime.

One telltale sign that high temperatures have begun to affect your wine is when the cork starts to bulge out of the bottle. On top of the molecular reaction that causes this to happen, it also means the wine has probably been exposed to additional oxygen. That will certainly affect the quality. If a wine is meant to age for several years and has been left out in a warm room for a few months, it may just have aged more quickly, allowing lucky wine-lovers to catch it at its peak early.

The lesson? Ask Question. Asked 7 years, 9 months ago. Active 3 years, 3 months ago. Viewed k times. Improve this question. Brian Nickel. Brian Nickel Brian Nickel 1 1 gold badge 9 9 silver badges 14 14 bronze badges. I don't know enough to answer, but will add this observation: The old legend that "Cold, Warm, Cold Again" skunks beer CAN'T be true: Coors is "Shipped Cold from the Rockies," or some such nonsense, but you can buy it warm in the store. And in numerous observations, I've found that making it cold again makes it no more gross than it always is.

Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. In short, no. Evans Brewing Company— When light hits beer, it provides the energy necessary to drive a reaction that transforms the iso-alpha-acids into 3-methylbutenethiol. It's actually pretty amazing how quickly this reaction can happen!

From the same article, The photochemical reaction that skunks beer occurs very quickly; a well-hopped beer in clear glass can become noticeably offensive with just 30 seconds of exposure to sunshine. To wrap it up, Since light is an essential ingredient in the skunking process, beers packaged in kegs, cans, and opaque bottles cannot be skunked. Improve this answer. Andrew Cheong Andrew Cheong 3, 1 1 gold badge 19 19 silver badges 50 50 bronze badges. Can you build on the temperature part?

How hot can my beer get before it's ruined? Well, I haven't tested it, but I can tell you that doing drastic like dumping it in liquid nitrogen and then leaving it out in the sun for a couple days would ruin it. I'm confused. Your opening paragraph is completely unsupported by the rest of your post. I'd posit that temperature changes do not spoil beer, but you start out saying it does I think that first paragraph may be wrong, but there's little in the rest of the text to say so one way or the other.

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