EVALUATION OF THE REPRESENTATIVENESS OF THE ODOR OF BEER EXTRACTS PRIOR TO ANALYSIS BY GC ELUATE SNIFFING

The importance of obtaining and proving that the odor of an extract is representative of the odor of the original product from which it was obtained, before analysis by GC-FID, GC-MS, or GC sniff, is discussed. The sensory methods, such as triangle tests, matching tests, and quan titative analysis, used to determine the representativeness of the odo r of an extract are described. Beer extracts obtained by three methods were used to illustrate the interest of the sensory tests. A method u sing a mixture of XAD resins was proved by sensory analysis to give so me extracts with sensory characteristics representative of the particu lar beers from which they were obtained. Such sensory evaluation of th e quality of the aroma of extracts has to be systematically made when sniffing analysis is applied to new types of beer or to different type s of products.