EVALUATION OF THE PROFILE OF VOLATILE ORGANIC COMPOUNDS IN INDUSTRIAL AND CRAFT BEERS

Abstract

The objective of this work was to determine the influence of some analytical parameters in craft and industrial beers characterization and to search for possible correlations between these parameters by use of chemometrics. For this purpose, the levels of color and bitterness were quantified by spectrophotometry and the concentrations of acetaldehyde, ethyl acetate, methanol, ethanol, propanol, iso-butanol and iso-amyl alcohol by gas chromatography with detection by flame ionization with a headspace sampler (HS - GC-FID). The results were evaluated by the student analysis for the means, at a confidence level of 95% (α = 0.05). Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was applied as a tool to assess the influence of analytical parameters to characterize industrial or craft beers. The results showed that, the levels of bitterness, color, ethanol, isoamyl alcohol, methanol and propanol are statistically different in craft and industrial beers. On the other hand, considering the PCA results, it is possible to attribute the parameters bitterness, color, acetaldehyde, methanol, ethanol, propanol, iso-butanol and iso-amyl alcohol as the better ones to characterize as craft beers, while the industrial beers were better characterized by the presence of ethyl acetate. Regarding the correlation matrix, it revealed that the parameters color, propanol and iso-amyl alcohol are correlated with the alcoholic content of beer, regardless of whether it is craft or industrial.