Baijiu, a transparent distilled spirit regarded as China's national liquor, is one of the world's most consumed spirits. The manufacturing process of Baijiu is relatively complex—as with whisky, brandy and other distilled alcoholic beverages, several steps are involved, including fermentation, distillation, and aging. The diverse raw materials used, complexity of microorganisms used for fermentation, and different regional environments greatly contribute to the variety of Baijiu products and their aroma profiles. The characterization and differentiation of Baijiu samples according to their aroma-type and origin (region) can be conducted by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC-MS). However, accurate analysis of these samples is challenging due to the high number and varying range of concentrations of compounds present, with detection and identification of trace level compounds being especially difficult.
Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometry (TOFMS) detection improves this task due to the ability to collect full mass range, unskewed MS data with fast acquisition rates.
This application note describes the development of a headspace solid-phase microextraction (HS-SPME) method in combination with GC and LECO's Pegasus BT time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOFMS) for the analysis of Baijiu's volatile organic components (VOCs).
HS-SPME was used to extract the VOCs of 10 Baijiu samples of different origin, for analysis by GC-TOF-MS. The comparison of the aroma profiles and the data analysis was facilitated using a new software tool—ChromaTOF Sync—which is a data processing tool that compiles peak information through sets of samples by performing automated peak finding and deconvolution of the high quality TOF-MS data on the set of samples. A composite sample set peak table is produced, and individual analyte trends through the sample set and overall sample trends can be observed and determined, providing the base for non-supervised statistical analysis. In this study, group type separation according to their respective class in terms of aroma-type and origin was obtained and statistically significant differences were easily highlighted.
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