The determination of ethanol concentration in a variety of alcoholic beverages is something that chemists, brewers, distilleries, and others would be interested in knowing. By using infrared spectroscopy, there are multiple peaks that can be we can use to determine the different concentrations of ethanol in that sample. In this study we were curious about the ethanol differences in non-alcoholic beers, beer sold from the grocery stores, and beer in the liquor stores. Infrared spectroscopy uses beams of infrared light that shine through the sample and which tells us what functional groups are involved and how much energy was absorbed at that specific frequency by striking the detector inside the instrument. After making a standard curve with lab grade ethanol and water, we are able to measure up the concentrations in a variety of non-alcoholic samples and alcoholic samples. We found the most common peak around 1045 ??−1 and used that for our standard and our samples.This information could be important to the people making the alcoholic product and those that are consuming it. We hope to continue to look further into the brewing process in order to come up with some different techniques to look at key factors into producing the best beer possible.<br/><br/>

Ethanol analysis via infrared spectroscopy

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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