Brewing the Very Best Cider Using Chromatography

Cider has been enjoying a surge in popularity over the last few decades – UK production has increased fivefold in the last 40 years alone. Most of us know that cider is made by fermenting apples and that it makes a great refreshing thirst-quencher on a sweltering hot summer’s day. What most people don’t know is that there is a whole science behind the art of cider production.

A Fine Art, A Delicate Science

Creating the perfect cider is no easy process. Firstly, only the freshest and ripest apples may be used, preferably with no starchy content. These are cleaned, mashed and juiced, before being treated with lipoxygenase enzymes and polyphenol oxidase.

Then the liquid must be fermented, which can take anywhere between two weeks and several months, depending on the size of the brewery and the quality of the cider desired. As a general rule, smaller, more designer breweries will ferment their cider for longer to achieve a more refined taste. Almost as important as the taste, however, is the smell – and this is where chromatography comes into its own.

Chromatography for Quality Assurance

Though sampling ciders via a traditional taste test is an imperative part of the monitoring process, gas chromatography can also provide hard facts about the brewed product. Positioned above the vats, an inlet absorbs the vapours emitted by the cider and can determine specific aroma and flavour components for analysis.

Indeed, cider experts from France have been using this very technique to analyse ciders over the last decade. A 2004-2006 study analysed 90 French ciders to determine how their microbe content affected the smell and taste of the product, helping to ensure quality and maximum customer satisfaction. Now, almost 10 years later, the author of that study Jean-Michel Le Quéré is teaming up with fellow expert Angélique Villiére to use gas chromatography in tandem with mass spectrometry (GC-MS) to assess how volatile compounds present in the cider are affected by the manufacturing process.

As well as using GC-MS, Villiéré’s team also used the lesser-known method of olfactometry, which involves expert scientists inhaling the vapours directly from the chromatograph to use their sense of smell to judge its content and quality.

Chromatography and Alcohol

Chromatography is often used to determine standards of quality in wholesale alcohol. Liqueur giants Jägermeister are famous proponents of the practice, insisting that its deployment is instrumental in ensuring that every bottle of their product meets their rigorous criteria. The article Jägermeister - Quality You Can Taste goes into more detail about the specific branches of chromatography used in the process and what exactly it involves.

Meanwhile, chromatography is also used in conjunction with alcohol in a legal sense, too. The article Analysing Imported Wine and Sparkling Wine talks about how Chinese customs officials have developed a portable chromatography tool which enables them to determine levels of methanol present in imported alcohol. Doing so is imperative in ensuring that the wine meets health and safety standards – as well as being vital for taxation purposes – and chromatography provides a fast and reliable method of obtaining the data.

A toast to chromatography!