Cannabis Confusion/The History of Afghan/Skunk
THIOLS ENTER THE EQUATION
In 1989, William Wood, a chemist at Humboldt State University (how ironic) discovered that thiols were the key component to the excretion and smell of the North American skunk animal.
Then in 2001, researchers at the University of North Carolina and the University of Gent in Belgium, published research into what makes beer smell skunky. The research showed that beer shares a similar thiol compound to the same one that is produced by skunks. Thiols are a chemical found in humulone, which is a compound found in hops.
From the article in
Discover Magazine June 29th, 2012:
“Shellhammer explains that
when ultraviolet light hits the humulone, a part of the molecule breaks off and binds with the sulfur in the beer, creating the thiol. “If you walk outside with a nice yellow beer like a pilsner on a summer day, the change is happening almost immediately,” he says.
He adds that in Europe and elsewhere, this is known as “light-struck” beer, not "skunky" beer, since skunks are not native to Europe.
Complicating matters is the fact that humans can smell thiols in parts per trillion, Shellhammer says. We perceive the other aromatic components of beer at parts per million. A tiny bit of thiol can overwhelm everything else.
Both hops and
cannabis naturally produce thiols. They also both produce some of the same
terpenes, fragrant chemical compounds, including
humulene (which is not chemically related to humulone), caryophyllene and myrcene.
That’s because hops and cannabis are in the same plant family,
Cannabaceae. If you analyze the oils extracted from each plant chemically, Shellhammer says, they are similar. “When we analyze the compounds in hops,” Shellhammer says, “Sometimes I walk by the lab and it smells like we are analyzing cannabis.””
LINK: Cannabis Confusion/The History of Afghan/Skunk
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