Posted on 07/01/2005 7:53:00 AM PDT by toddlintown
MOSCOW - Dutch beer giant Heineken is preparing to buy one of Russia's last major brewers under local control, the country's anti-monopoly watchdog said Thursday.
Heineken filed for permission to buy St. Petersburg-based brewery Stepan Razin on June 24, said Irina Kashunina, spokeswoman for the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service. She declined to give further details.
Heineken's request comes at a time when foreign brewing giants are moving swiftly to consolidate the remains of Russia's booming beer market.
(Excerpt) Read more at sptimes.ru ...
Now if Heineken would only start bottling their product in brown bottles and stop the skunking of their beer. Heineken in an aluminium can tastes like a very different beer as compared to their skunked bottles.
Tastes better without all of that skunkiness you describe.
Now if Heineken would only start bottling their product in brown bottles and stop the skunking of their beer. Heineken in an aluminium can tastes like a very different beer as compared to their skunked bottles.
I haven't had Heineken in a can in a long time. Do you think there really is a big difference? Why would the green bottle have anything to do with the beer potentially becoming skunked?
"Why would the green bottle have anything to do with the beer potentially becoming skunked?"
Clear and green bottles allow more light waves to pass through the glass. The light reacts with the oils in the hops. The result? A skunked beer.
Here's part of an article I did awhile back for the Chicago Tribune about green and clear bottled beers...
The brewing industry spends millions of dollars each year on quality control of their products, but every very so often a bad tasting beer will make its way to the consumer. Beer is a perishable product than can suffer from negligence at the brewery, improper packaging, abuse by distributors, retailers and even consumers. With the almost limitless choices on store shelves now afforded by the availability of microbrewed beers, the resurgence of regional brands and the importation of beers from Algeria to Zaire, beer drinkers are facing more variety---but possibly more pitfalls in their beer purchases.
Below are some common flavor problems in beer that every beer drinker should be aware of:
"Skunky" Beer
A study at the University of North Carolina has scientifically confirmed what brewers have known for over a century---light can affect the flavor of beer. Scientists at the university subjected isohumulones, a grouping of chemical compounds found in hops, to laser beams in order to simulate what often happens when beer is exposed to visible or ultraviolet light. The result was the formation of a chemical component known as "skunky thiol." The term is an accurate one since the same component can also be found in skunk glands. Often times, the sensory connection between taste and smell will lead beer drinkers to mistakenly conclude that a lightstruck bottle of beer is off in flavor (the combination of both taste and smell), though the photo degradation of hop components exposed to light is actually exhibited in the nose of the beer.
Since aluminum cans and draft kegs are impervious to light, this phenomenon is only found in bottled beer. While early American brewers used trial-and-error to determine that brown bottles offered the best protection from light for their products, spectrographic analyses of light wavelength and glass color have concluded that early Braumeisters were correct in their assumptions; brown bottles absorb light and thus protect beer. Green bottles, however, allow some light to pass through, while clear glass offers little protection. Despite this evidence, today's bottled beer can be found in clear, green and brown bottles.
The problem of bottled beer becoming "skunked" is not limited to exposure to sunlight, as was the case during the early years of beer bottling. Probably the greatest incidences today of beer becoming lightstruck occur in the display cases of retailers where fluorescent lights are used to illuminate inventory.
"If you have to buy green or clear bottled product," suggests Ray Daniels, editor of the Colorado-based brewing magazines Zymurgy and The New Brewer, "try to buy product that has not been exposed to fluorescent light at all," noting that the photo degradation of the isohumulones in hopped beer can occur in minutes.
The Miller Brewing Company has gotten around the issue of photo degradation of hops in their clear-bottled Miller High Life brand by using modified hop extract in the beer-making process. Rather than add traditional hop cones or compressed hop pellets to the brewing kettle to balance the flavor of the beer, Miller strips the isohumulones from the hops during the extract process, leaving the clear-bottled beer immune to the damaging affects of light. More breweries than ever, however, are starting to ship their bottled beer in sealed cardboard cases in order to avoid skunkiness in their products.
How commonplace is skunked beer? At the website RateBeer.com where beer drinkers are invited to leave their comments about beers they have tasted, reviews for green and clear-bottled brews are often laced with comments ranging from "slightly skunked" to "didn't smell that great."
Makes a beer drinker wonder why breweries package their products in green or clear glass. "A lot of it is custom and tradition," says Ron Extract who heads up local beer sales for Boston-based Shelton Brothers Importers.
"[They] are used primarily for marketing," argues Lyn Kruger, president of the Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago. "It is thought that clear and green bottles project a better (higher class) image than brown bottles and make them more distinctive on the shelf." Kruger, who worked as a research microbiologist for South African Breweries (SAB) before heading up the Chicago-based school for brewers, doubts if breweries that bottle in green or clear glass would ever switch over to the more protective brown bottles. Many beer drinkers, says Kruger, "have come to expect this flavor. The brewery would not want to change the packaging as the consumer may react negatively to the lack of this flavor."
When I visited Moscow in 1972, the only brand of beer available in most places was Moskovskaya. It came in large, heavy glass bottles, sort of like Coke bottles, had a watery consistency, and was usually drunk warm. It was the worst brew I had ever drunk, and my fellow tourists, who were mostly Germans--and fastidious beer connoisseurs--agreed. At the trip's conclusion, they made up a song, "Es Gibt Kein Bier in Moskau" (There's No Beer in Moscow), set to the melody of the popular German drinking tune "Es Gibt Kein Bier Auf Hawaii" (There's No Beer In Hawaii).
The best beer avaliable in the Soviet Union at the time was Stella, an Egyptian lager, which was quite tasty and could be found at the better eateries.
"Now if Heineken would only start bottling their product in brown bottles and stop the skunking of their beer. Heineken in an aluminium can tastes like a very different beer as compared to their skunked bottles."
I stopped buying the bottles sometime ago and when I do buy Heineken it is only in the cans. The taste difference is amazing.
I think I knew a guy in junior high who had this name.
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