Toxic compounds in homemade spirits in Bosnia and Herzegovina: A pilot study

Abstract

The main aim of this preliminary study was to investigate the presence of potentially toxic compounds (methanol, hydrocyanic acid and urea) in homemade fruit spirits produced in different parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina. A total of 15 samples of 8 different fruit spirits were analyzed (apple, apricot, cherry, grape, pear, plum, quince and juniper). Content of hydrocyanic acid was higher than maximum permissible level in 5 out of 15 samples. In general, the average content of methanol was higher in samples from Bosnia comparing to the samples from Herzegovina (874.62 vs. 563.99 g/hL of pure alcohol), but still was lower than maximum concentration proposed by national regulation (1200 g/hLof pure alcohol for fruit spirits and 1000 g/hL of pure alcohol for grape spirit) except for one grape spirit sample (1162.2 g/hL of pure alcohol). Urea was detected in all analyzed samples (5.819 to 77.82 mg/L) with the average concentration of 37.95 mg/L. Since this is, to our knowledge, the firststudy that included the chemical analysis of homemade spirits in BiH, these results are of great importance for the further research.