| Abstract: | A method for the determination of dimethyl sulphide (DMS) in beer and for total DMS precursor in malt is described. The DMS was extracted into chloroform and determined by glass capillary gas liquid chromatography (GLC) using a flame ionisation detector (FID) and diethyl ether as an internal standard. Errors arising from the use of ‘head space’ sampling were thereby avoided. The reproducibility of results and the recovery of DMS at the 100 ppb level were satisfactory but less so at levels below 50 ppb. Beers produced in a pilot brewery from malts containing high levels of total DMS precursor were not found to contain correspondingly high levels of DMS. |
