Alcoholic drinks, quality control

Pure 100% ethyl alcohol is a colorless, volatile hquid with a pungent taste. One hundred-proof alcoholic drinks are about 50% ethanol. When consumed, ethanol is a depressant and may be habit-forming. It rapidly oxidizes in the body, but even small amounts cause dizziness, nausea, headaches, and loss of motor control. Proof was how whiskey salesmen of the Old West demonstrated that their product was potent. They would place some gunpowder in a tin dish and then pour on some of their whiskey. If a match would ignite the mixture, this was claimed to serve as 100% proof of the whiskeys quality. It just happens that 100-proof whiskey is about 50% ethanol. 

The need to develop concise methods for determining the concentration of C2H5OH in aqueous solutions arises from the requirements imposed by the quality control of alcohol drinks. 

Currently, the assay of carbohydrates is a very important criterion for the quality control of drinks and foodstuffs, especially in dietary products. Assay of carbohydrates is also very important in the fields of monitoring of food-labeling claims, analysis of sweeteners, bulking agents, and fat substitutes as well as for establishing authenticity and in the fermentation monitoring in the production of alcoholic beverages. 

Thus, use of two operative electrochemical methods allows you to determine quickly and relatively cheaply the total content of AO and their activity with respect oxygen and its radicals in various grades of wines and cognacs and to identify low-quahty production. The results of the present work received for more than 100 samples of alcoholic drinks, show rather high (80-90%) correlation of these methods for diy, semi-diy red and white wines. These methods can be applied for quality control of wines and other alcoholic drinks. 

There is a strong demand for biosensors in the food produce industry to follow the various steps in production, and control the quality of the final products. The glucose electrode is used to monitor fermentation, the lactate electrode to control the quality of wines and yoghurt, and the ethanol electrode to evaluate the degree of alcohol in alcoholic drinks. 

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