{"id":4493,"date":"2017-01-31T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-01-31T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.waters.com\/blog\/mission-improbable-rapid-total-sugar-reporting\/"},"modified":"2023-07-06T17:50:24","modified_gmt":"2023-07-06T17:50:24","slug":"mission-improbable-rapid-total-sugar-reporting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.waters.com\/blog\/mission-improbable-rapid-total-sugar-reporting\/","title":{"rendered":"Mission Improbable: Rapid Total Sugar Reporting for Beer by Mass Detection"},"content":{"rendered":"

How mass detection allows us to tell the beautiful truth about beer<\/h2>\n

By Larissa Burns<\/a>, Group Technical Analyst, Lion Co. \u00a0\"How<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been working at Lion<\/a> as their analytical specialist for eight years, predominantly using and developing methods for the enviable task of analyzing beer. I have around 20 years of chromatography experience in several different fields, including food and pharma \u2013 and I\u2019m pleased to say I still love analytical chemistry and chromatography; there\u2019s always a sense of discovery as you tackle new challenges. You never quite know where the problem solving process might take you \u2013 but it\u2019s exciting when you get there.<\/p>\n

Lion has around 6700 employees in Australia and New Zealand, making it one of the largest food and beverage companies. There are essentially two parts to the business: \u201cDairy & Drinks\u201d and \u201cBeer, Spirits & Wine\u201d \u2013 but beer production is a huge part of what we do. Many readers will be familiar with our XXXX beer<\/a> and Tooheys brands, but we\u2019ve also got a fast-growing craft beer portfolio<\/a> (led by our James Squire brand) and we also produce international beers, including Heineken, Guinness and Kirin under strict license agreements.<\/p>\n

Sweet focus<\/h3>\n

Each of our breweries has a laboratory for quality control analysis. I work in a centralized lab that focuses on supporting our brewery operations at a higher level, with a focus on spotting trends or gathering information across our portfolio. For example, we might perform projects that focus on calcium levels, certain hop compounds, or volatile aroma compounds. We\u2019re also there to support the quality control (QC) labs if they detect a problem by troubleshooting to determine what might be going wrong in the brewing process.<\/p>\n

Lately, we\u2019ve been working on several projects that demand the quantitation of low levels of sugar. Sugar analysis isn\u2019t something new to us \u2013 we monitor sugar levels at various early stages of the brewing process. However, Lion was also interested in monitoring fermentation profiles to completion \u2013 and we wanted to introduce voluntary nutritional panels across our beer portfolio. The latter feeds into a larger education program called \u201cBeer the Beautiful Truth,\u201d which aims to bust common myths about beer and communicate some analytically supported evidence, including the fact that Lion\u2019s beers contain, on average, less than 0.1 percent total sugar.<\/p>\n

We were using electrochemical detection to measure the relatively high levels of sugar in wort (the liquid extracted from the mashing process), but when it came to beer quantitation, it was much more challenging \"\"<\/a> because of the inherently low sugar levels. Our run times were long, we were struggling with sensitivity, and there were some interferences. It\u2019s fair to say we were working at the limit, so it seemed the opportune time to seek out alternatives.<\/p>\n

The Waters ACQUITY UPLC H-Class<\/a> with ACQUITY QDa<\/a> mass detector was a combination that had a lot going for it \u2013 not least the fact that Waters demonstrated a cost-effective and robust proof of concept for our application. Another important factor in our decision to go with the ACQUITY QDa was the fact that it was easy to use \u2013 you switch it on, wait for it to complete its start-up cycle, and you\u2019re ready to run samples. We were already familiar with Empower<\/a> software, so that made the decision even easier.<\/p>\n

Working with a mass detector is much like working with any other detector \u2013 you set up your sample set, add your vials, and hit \u201cgo.\u201d When you come back after the run, even the data processing is similar to what you\u2019d expect with something like a PDA detector.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Our method makes things slightly more complicated, because we\u2019re monitoring six sugars at four different ion masses, so we need four channels. But we found pretty quickly that it\u2019s really not that different to running an LC system with one channel.<\/p>\n

Confidence in the beautiful truth<\/h3>\n

Even though beer is 90% water and typically around 5% alcohol, it\u2019s actually a pretty complex mixture; there are proteins, carbohydrates, sugars, hop compounds, esters, and so on \u2013 but all at low concentrations. Notably, the contract analytical food labs that we approached about sugar analysis in beer could not offer the reporting limit we were looking for \u2013 they typically deal with higher concentrations (as found in other foods). So we had to develop our own method.<\/p>\n

The ACQUITY QDa mass detector is sensitive enough to work at the concentration levels of sugars we are interested in (LOD is around 1\u20132 \u03bcg\/mL) but crucially, by combining retention time and mass information, we are also now able to achieve greater selectivity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the nutritional project mentioned above, we needed to analyze around 1500 samples in just a couple of weeks \u2013 and it was quite a task. Put simply, we couldn\u2019t have done it without the new system. With the old system, each injection would have taken 30 minutes, and we needed to get through 100 samples per day \u2013 sadly, there aren\u2019t 50 hours in a day…<\/p>\n

Upgrading to the ACQUITY UPLC and QDa as a package was fantastic \u2013 we got a double boost to our method. Each injection is around 5 minutes, so we could run 100 samples overnight, doing the sample preparation and data processing during the day.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, that means getting through our work much faster. And because we were able to combine mass information with retention times, we were a lot more confident in the results that we generated.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s great to have the power of mass data in our lab without the usual headaches \u2013 or the need for a mass spectrometrist!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Larissa Burns is a Group Technical Analyst at Lion Co., Sydney, Australia.<\/em><\/p>\n

Originally produced and published by The Analytical Scientist<\/a> for Waters: Mass Data Made Simple<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

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More information:<\/h4>\n