Perceived aroma characteristic of Tsingtao beer in relation to wort gravity

Abstract

To investigate the impacts of wort gravity on perceived aroma characteristic of Tsingtao beer, sensory-directed flavor approaches, including sensory quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA), gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS), gas chromatography–olfactometry (GC–O), and aroma recombination experiments were employed. The result of QDA revealed that the aroma intensities of Tsingtao beer varied with the wort gravity. GC–MS determined 50 volatile compounds in all from the four kinds of Tsingtao beer samples with different wort gravity. Concentrations of most compounds were positively correlated with beer wort gravity. Then 39 aroma-active compounds in the four beer samples were identified by GC-O, and 33 of them were found exited in Y4 sample with the highest wort gravity. The aroma recombination experiments showed that aroma-active compounds with AI ≥ 1 (GC–O detected) could simulate the aroma profile, indicating these compounds were aroma perceived compounds. There were 16, 17, 19 and 23 aroma perceived compounds in the four kinds of samples, respectively, indicating Y4 had the most abundant aroma perceived compounds.