Beer, a malted beverage loved throughout the world, is manufactured by fermenting malt, but the aroma and taste vary depending on the type of malt and fermentation method used. Aroma compounds in food and beverages are analyzed using a GC-MS system, which offers superior qualitative analysis capabilities, but determining which of the hundreds of detected compounds affect aroma requires a lot of work processing vast amounts of data. However, the amount of work involved in searching through that data can be significantly reduced by using a database containing previously registered compound information.
Assuming analysis for an R&D application, this article describes using an SPME Arrow to extract aroma compounds from samples of different types of beer made by different manufacturers using different methods, and then analyzing the aroma compounds by GC-MS. Results were also analyzed using the Smart Aroma Database, which contains information for over 500 compounds related to aroma. Identified compounds were analyzed by principal component analysis using SIMCA® 17 (Infocom) software to characterize and compare differences in aroma from the different types of beers made using different methods.
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