Packaging
Clear glass bottle
Offers no protection at all against lightstrike — beer in clear glass can skunk within minutes of direct sunlight.
Clear glass offers no protection against light whatsoever. Hop-derived iso-alpha acids break down under ultraviolet and visible blue light to form a thiol chemically almost identical to the one in skunk spray, and the human nose detects it in parts per trillion. In direct sunlight the reaction takes minutes.
It persists because it sells: buyers can see the beer, and some brands are strongly associated with the bottle they come in. Some brewers use chemically modified hop extracts that cannot form the compound, which solves the problem at the cost of a different bitterness. If you have a choice between the same beer in brown and clear glass, take the brown one.
How well it protects the beer
| Light | none. Offers no barrier. Any light exposure begins degrading hop-derived compounds immediately. |
|---|---|
| Oxygen | low. A small, steady rate of ingress. Over months it contributes to hop fade and eventually to cardboard notes. |
| Conditioning | Beer can referment in this container, which builds carbonation naturally and leaves a yeast sediment. |
| Material | clear glass |
| Typical volume | 330–750 ml |
Other formats
- Aluminium can — complete light protection, very low oxygen ingress.
- Brown glass bottle — good light protection, low oxygen ingress.
- Cask — complete light protection, high oxygen ingress.
- Green glass bottle — poor light protection, low oxygen ingress.
- Keg — complete light protection, very low oxygen ingress.
- Mini keg — complete light protection, low oxygen ingress.
See the side-by-side table on the packaging index, or how this plays out over time in storage and freshness.
Last reviewed 2026-08-15.