Identification of Volatile Compounds from a Brewery with SPME Technique

Abstract The paper presents results of the analysis of the volatile compounds arising from the production processes in a brewery. The investigated material comprised the unhoped brewer’s wort which was taken from the fermentation tanks during the industrial process. The identification of volatile compounds was conducted with the use of Solid-Phase MicroExtraction (SPME) technique by extracting the compounds from the headspace of the brewer’s wort (HS-SPME). The procedure was optimized by modifying the parameters potentially influencing the process efficiency. The analytes adsorbed on the fibers were subsequently placed in the injector of a gas chromatograph, where they were released in the course of thermal desorption. Three types of fibers were chosen for the experiments: 65 μm PDMS/DVB, 50/30 μm DVB/CAR/PDMS and 100 μm PDMS. The greatest number of peaks corresponding to compounds found in the examined material was observed on the 50/30 μm DVB/CAR/PDMS fiber while the lowest was identified on the 100 μm PDMS fiber. The detected compounds are mainly the derivatives of aliphatic, alicyclic and aromatic hydrocarbons with different functional groups e.g. carbonyl, aldehyde or ester and possessing O-heteroatom in their structure.