Automated reporting on the quality of hops and hop products.

The quality of a hop variety or a hop product can readily be assessed by a fully automated sequence of selective extraction. fractionation and quantitative analysis. To illustrate the elegance of the method, nine hop varieties and three hop extracts were compared with respect to the content of important marker compounds in the hop oils and of the hop acids. Supercritical fluid extraction at different densities of carbon dioxide was applied to extract selectively. the hop oils and the hop acids, respectively. The hop oils were further fractionated into an apolar and a polar fraction by solid phase extraction and consecutive elution with n-hexane and ethyl acetate. Separation and identification were achieved by capillary gas chromatography coupled to mass spectrometry. Myrcene, beta-caryophyllene, alpha-humulene and beta-farnesene in the apolar fraction, linalool, undecan-2-one. tridecan-2-one and humuladienone in the polar fraction were selected for quantitative evaluation of the respective hop oils. Sulphur-containing compounds were revealed by capillary gas chromatography using sulphur-selective atomic emission detection. Complete separation and quantification of all hop alpha-acids and beta-acids was effected by microemulsion electrokinetic chromatography coupled to diode array detection