Off-flavours detection in alcoholic beverages by electronic nose coupled to GC

In the present work, alcoholic beverages (beer and wines) tainted with off-flavour we re analyzed by electronic nose after dehydration and desalcoholization procedure. Principal component analysis (PCA) and discriminant factorial analysis (DFA) of data allowed to clearly visualize the differences among the different alcoholic beverages and classify them independently of their ethanol content. Off-flavours detection in beer and wine samples was carried out successfully. Besides, it was shown that the identification of difference between a given beer and a tainted beer of the same brand was easier than the one of difference between two different beer brands. In contrast, concerning red wines, beverage richest in aroma compounds compared to beer, the aroma defect detection was difficult when the wine origin was unknown. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.