Master Brewers Podcast

A growing demand in utilizing biotransformation, a general term for the conversion of compounds through biological pathways, to improve the organoleptic profile of beer has changed the way hop forward beer recipes are approached. While the analysis of terpene biotransformation has been well documented, there remains a gap in knowledge in sulfur compounds due to their extremely low concentrations (sometimes in concentrations of parts per trillion) and high volatility. Analysis of sulfur compounds requires precise and sensitive analytical methodology in order to detect them. While sulfur compounds have been successfully detected using gas-chromatography mass spectrometry (GC-MS) a pulsed flame photometric detector (PFPD), and a GC sulfur chemiluminescence detector (GC-SCD), the research presented here utilizes a GC-SCD via stir bar-sorptive extaction (SBSE) methodology previously used to track aroma intensities in optimizing harvest picking windows. This work shows an identification of various thiols and sulfur