Accounting for Sugars in Alcohol Determination of Liqueurs

Mark Canestrano Product Specialist, Anton-Paar
A well-defined alcohol content is an obligatory parameter in quality control for the production of alcoholic beverages. Since many spirits are binary solutions, alcohol concentration is determined through density measurement. However, with liqueurs, more extract is present, and simple density measurement for the finished product becomes less reliable. With this presentation, we will show how optical rotation measurements, combined with density and NIR measurements, can save time in quality control of liqueurs, while providing accuracy comparable to density measurement after distillation.