Spectroscopic Measurement and Multivariate Analysis for Classification of Beer Types

Introduction

Beer is an alcoholic beverage that is quite popular, and consumed in large quantities. Furthermore, the market is now bustling with beverages such as non-alcoholic beer and low-malt beer with beer-like flavors. Beer, low-malt beer, and non-alcoholic beer can all be considered types of beer. A great many varieties of these have been produced and marketed with modifications to the ingredients to adjust such characteristics as alcohol and calorie content. From the standpoint of spectrometric analysis—assuming that the absorption spectra should reflect specific characteristics depending on the types and quantities of ingredients in different beers—we were very interested to see the kinds of differences that would occur upon actual examination. Here, we introduce the results of our investigation into the differences in absorption spectra obtained from measurement of a variety of beers using the UV-3600 Ultraviolet-Visible Near-Infrared Spectrophotometer. Also presented here is our attempt to classify different types of beer using multivariate analysis.

November 9, 2012 GMT