Chemical And Biochemical Means To Detect Alcohol

By Paul Held, Laboratory Manager, Applications Dept, BioTek Instruments, Inc.

Determination of Ethanol Concentration in Fermented Beer Samples and Distilled Products
The fermentation of sugars to alcohol is used for a number of different applications, most notably the production of alcoholic beverages. The beer and wine industry ferment extracts of barley and grapes respectively to produce numerous alcoholic beverages, while distilleries further concentrate ethanol using the evaporation and condensation differences of ethanol and water. Ethanol can be biochemically quantitated from a diverse matrix, such as fermenting beer, using alcohol oxidase enzyme, while relatively pure ethanol can be determined chemically using the oxidizer pyridinium chlorochromate (PCC). Here we describe the use of ethanol oxidase and PCC to monitor ethanol production during the fermentation of beer and from distilled products.