Verification of authenticity is a crucial aspect of food quality control. In particular, alcoholic beverages have been targets of numerous adulteration schemes. Addition of caramel coloring, water and lesser value whiskies to aged straight bourbons will be addressed in the present study.
Unadulterated and adulterated bourbons were analyzed using a mass spectrometry based chemical sensor. Sample introduction to the sensor using headspace (HS) and stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE) was used to detect the adulteration. Multivariate analysis techniques such as softindependent-modeling-class-analogy (SIMCA) and principal component regression (PCR) successfully identified the adulterated bourbons.
Adulterants such as inexpensive bourbons add trace levels of new components to the bourbon. Classification models for both sample introduction techniques indicate the successful discrimination of adulterated bourbons. Detection of the adulterants using SBSE revealed the presence of ions not detected with headspace sampling. The ability to detect compounds using SBSE that were not detected in the headspace may be advantageous in discriminating some types of samples. Identification of adulterated bourbons using HS and SBSE techniques demonstrates the usefulness of the MS chemical sensor to differentiate samples with close chemical composition quickly and accurately.
