GC/TOF MS application: Flavour profiling of beer with BenchTOF-dx

Volatile chemicals which characterise beer flavour

The ‘signature’ flavour of a beer is characterised by a vast array of volatiles. For quality control, product design or competitor information for example, a detector which can give rise to data from extremes of concentration and volatility with high sensitivity is very important.

BenchTOF-dx produces highly sensitive data for the full range of volatiles seen.

• A SPE-tD™ (Markes International) cartridge was introduced to the beer sample and agitated (30 min at 45°C).
  
  
• The sampled cartridge was inserted into a TD tube and desorbed on Markes’ UNITY 2™ thermal desorption instrument. 
  
  
• The sample was transferred from the GC onto BenchTOF-dx.
  
  
• Conditions:
  • Transfer line: 300°C
  • Ion source: 200°C
  • Mass range: 35–800 amu
  • Data range: 5000 spectra per data point (2 Hz) 
  
  
• Both raw and dynamic background-compensated (DBC) TIC traces are generated.

Results

	The total ion chromatograph and a magnified view of the baseline highlight the massive range of volatiles and their abundances. Nevertheless, clicking on any given peak, even the very smallest, allows the user to view the classical spectrum of the component and run a search of this spectrum on a standard library, e.g. NIST, for identification.
TIC of beer sample
Magnified TIC of beer sample	Enlarged view of peak at 24.45 mins

Mass spectrum of small peak seen at RT 24.45 mins	NIST search of small component of beer sample

Conclusion

BenchTOF-dx has given rise to comprehensive data allowing the compound profile of the beer to be analysed.  Using this information can help a beer manufacturer improve or maintain the quality of their product.