Enlarging Knowledge on Lager Beer Volatile Metabolites Using Multidimensional Gas Chromatography

Cátia Martins,Sílvia M Rocha,Adelaide Almeida,Tiago Brandão

doi:10.3390/foods9091276

Cátia Martins, Sílvia M Rocha + Show 2 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/foods9091276

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Abstract

Foodomics, emergent field of metabolomics, has been applied to study food system processes, and it may be useful to understand sensorial food properties, among others, through foods metabolites profiling. Thus, as beer volatile components represent the major contributors for beer overall and peculiar aroma properties, this work intends to perform an in-depth profiling of lager beer volatile metabolites and to generate new data that may contribute for molecules’ identification, by using multidimensional gas chromatography. A set of lager beers were used as case-study, and 329 volatile metabolites were determined, distributed over 8 chemical families: acids, alcohols, esters, monoterpenic compounds, norisoprenoids, sesquiterpenic compounds, sulfur compounds, and volatile phenols. From these, 96 compounds are reported for the first time in the lager beer volatile composition. Around half of them were common to all beers under study. Clustering analysis allowed a beer typing according to production system: macro- and microbrewer beers. Monoterpenic and sesquiterpenic compounds were the chemical families that showed wide range of chemical structures, which may contribute for the samples’ peculiar aroma characteristics. In summary, as far as we know, this study presents the most in-depth lager beer volatile composition, which may be further used in several approaches, namely, in beer quality control, monitoring brewing steps, raw materials composition, among others.

Highlights

Beer represents a broadly popular and widespread alcoholic beverage, and according to WorldHealth Organization (WHO) statistics, it is the most consumed beverage type per capita in Europe (40.0%) and WorldHealth Organization (WHO) Region of the Americas (53.8%) [1]
Overall and peculiar aroma properties of beer are dependent on its volatile components, whose origin and/or change can be attributed to several brewing steps, from raw materials until consumption
This previous targeted metabolomics approach [28] was focused on the in-depth coverage of beer terpenic compounds, in which a beer terpen-typing was achieved due to samples’ category clustering. As this current study intends to characterize all the volatile metabolites present in lager beer, these chemical families could not be ignored, and they were included in this study, being key elements of the beer volatile composition. This targeted metabolomics approach, achieved by the high throughput and sensitive methodology based on HS-solid-phase microextraction (SPME)/GC×GC-ToFMS, allowed the detection of 329 volatile metabolites from the 8 selected chemical families previously enumerated

Summary

Introduction

Beer represents a broadly popular and widespread alcoholic beverage, and according to World. Health Organization (WHO) statistics, it is the most consumed beverage type per capita in Europe (40.0%) and WHO Region of the Americas (53.8%) [1]. Hundreds of different beer brands are available in the market, being lager beers the main type to be produced and consumed worldwide [2], and the most studied. Beer attractiveness arises from its pleasant organoleptic and nutritional attributes regarding a moderate consumption. Overall and peculiar aroma properties of beer are dependent on its volatile components, whose origin and/or change can be attributed to several brewing steps, from raw materials until consumption. One particular source of these volatile components is mainly related with raw materials (cereals and hops) [3]

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