Various techniques employing polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as an extraction medium prior to GC-TOFMS analysis were investigated to measure off-flavors in aged beer. The techniques included stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE), headspace sorptive extraction (HSSE), purge-and-trap (P&T) and closed-loop-stripping (CLS). SBSE appeared to provide the most accurate quantitation and was capable of detecting the most odor-active compounds. The peak deconvolution capability of the Leco Pegasus TOFMS was found critical to the detection and accurate quantitation of key off-flavor chemicals. Compared to fresh control beer, increases in furfural, furfuryl ethyl ether, furyl hydroxymethyl ketone, 2,4-dodecadienal, (E,E), benzeneacetic acid ethyl ester, ß-damascenone and 3-pyridinecarboxylic acid ethyl ester (a.k.a. nicotinic acid ethyl ester) were observed in beer samples incubated 12 wks at 30°C and increases in dimethyl disulfide, dimethyltrisulfide and benzeneacetaldehyde occurred in beer exposed to sunlight for 8 hrs.

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Twister® / Stir Bar Sorptive Extraction (SBSE)

The GERSTEL Twister® enables efficient extraction of organic compounds from aqueous matrices based on Stir Bar Sorptive Extraction (SBSE). SBSE is a solvent-free extraction technique, which is significantly faster than most conventional extraction techniques. SBSE is up to 1000x more sensitive than SPME since the stir bar has significantly more sorbent volume and since it can extract, and concentrate analytes from, a much larger sample volume due to the efficient stirring.

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