Originally posted by: amoeba
The reason corona and Heinekein doesn't taste that good to us is because both beers use either clear glass or green glass bottles, not as good as a dark brown bottle at keeping out the sunlight which produces the skunky smell in beers.
Due to the long distance which they travel for being imported, the adverse effects of sunlight become very apparent.
I bet drinking Heinekein fresh from its belgium brewery is pretty good.
true, but not about the taste difference (anymore)
beers like heineken and becks both taste skunky here (and other countries where they were imported)
While in their origin, the beer was not skunky.
This happened because shipping times were never consistent; therefore they couldn't master the amount of hoppes to add in order to keep the beer fresh during shipment.
The people got used to drinking the skunky beer, and the people LIKED the skunky beer.
Now that shipping times are faster and more consistent (and the companies have mastered the usage of preservatives), there's no point in making the beer taste non-skunky - because thats what its drinkers want.
Now if you were in holland, and snagged a heineken destined for the US - it would taste less skunky (because it hasn't aged in the bottle yet)