During the mashing-in step of the beer brewing process, starch in broken down into simple, fermentable sugars. This process is catalyzed by naturally occurring enzymes that have been activated in the malted barley. The sugar profile generated during the mashing-in process varies with the type of malted barley used, and the mashing-in temperature, and has an effect on the final taste of the beer. Since simple sugars lack a conjugated system for UV detection, it is challenging to separate and analyze a mixture of simple carbohydrates.The goal of this project is to derivatize carbohydrates to generate derivatives that are UV active for HPLC separation with UV detection. We aim to quantify unique sugar profiles to be used to describe the malting, mashing-in, and fermentation of beer in an undergraduate lab setting. 1-phenyl-3-methyl-5-pyrazolone (PMP) was used to form UV-active carbohydrate derivatives from glucose, maltose, galactose, and raffinose. Extraction with a chloroform and separation with a silica column allowed for the isolation of various products with unique Rf values on TLC. We plan to run our derivatization reaction with beer samples at various points during the beer brewing process and analyze the products by HPLC with UV detection to monitor how the sample’s sugar profile changes throughout the brewing process.

Analysis of carbohydrates in the beer brewing process using HPLC

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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