Sensors and Actuators B 159 (2011) 51–59

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Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/snb

Aging fingerprint characterization of beer using electronic nose

Mahdi Ghasemi-Varnamkhasti a,b,∗ , Seyed Saeid Mohtasebi a , Maryam Siadat b ,
Jesus Lozano c , Hojat Ahmadi a , Seyed Hadi Razavi d , Amadou Dicko e
a
Department of Agricultural Machinery Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran
b
Laboratoire d’Automatique et de Sciences Comportementales, LASC, Université Paul Verlaine – Metz, 7 rue Marconi, 57070 Metz, France
c
Grupo de Investigación en Sistemas Sensoriales, Universidad de Extremadura, Av. Elvas s/n 06006 Badajoz, Spain
d
Department of Food Science and Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran
e
Laboratoire de Chimie et de Méthodologies pour l’Environnement (LCME), Université Paul Verlaine–Metz,Bd. Arago, 57070 Metz, France

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this work, attempts were made in order to characterize the change of aroma of alcoholic and non
Received 17 March 2011 alcoholic beers during the aging process by use of a metal oxide semiconductor based electronic nose.
Received in revised form 3 June 2011 The aged beer samples were statistically characterized in several classes. Linear techniques as principal
Accepted 8 June 2011
component analysis (PCA) and Linear Discriminant Analaysis (LDA) were performed over the data that
Available online 14 June 2011
revealed non alcoholic beer classes are separated except a partial overlapping between zones correspond-
ing to two specified classes of the aged beers. A clear discrimination was not found among the alcoholic
Keywords:
beer classes showing the more stability of such type of beer compared with non alcoholic beer. In this
Beer
Aging
research, to classify the classes, two types of artificial neural networks were used: Probabilistic Neural
Electronic nose Networks (PNN) with Radial Basis Functions (RBF) and FeedForward Networks with Backpropagation (BP)
Machine olfaction learning method. The classification success was found to be 90% and 100% for alcoholic and non alcoholic
Artificial neural network beers, respectively. Application of PNN showed the classification accuracy of 83% and 100%, respectively
Metal oxide semiconductor for the aged alcoholic and non alcoholic beer classes as well. Finally, this study showed the capability of
Artificial nose the electronic nose system for the evaluation of the aroma fingerprint changes in beer during the aging
Gas sensors process.
© 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction of the development of components that are negative from a con-

Complex mixture of volatile compounds varying in chemi-
cal structures and concentration levels generates the beer aroma
which has a key role in beer quality. The aroma or flavor of beer
can be considered to be derived from four sources: raw materials,
the impact of the process, in-pack flavor changes and the ingress
of taint materials. Ultimately it is the combination of these factors
that create the flavor or aroma of beer. Beer production is a compli-
cated process, relying on three biotransformation steps - mashing,
fermentation and maturation, on to which is superimposed the
chemical changes that arise particularly during wort boiling and
wort clarification [1–3].
The composition of beer is complex, so it is not surprising that
the finished product bears compounds that are mutually reactive.
It is important to recognize that, as there are no reported instances
∗ Corresponding author at: Department of Agricultural Machinery Engineering,
Faculty of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran.
Tel.: +98 2612801011; fax: +98 261 2808138.
E-mail addresses: ghasemymahdi@gmail.com, ghasemymahdi@ut.ac.ir
(M. Ghasemi-Varnamkhasti).
sumer well-being perspective, the major concern for a brewer is the
consistency and the stability of the product in the market and the
maintenance of optimal quality in package. Therefore, the brew-
ing industry is concerned with the stability of its final products.
Maturation (commercial aging) at the final stage in the brewery
followed by filtration is carried out to develop desirable flavors and
aromas and to diminish off flavors. It also allows time for proteins
and polyphenols to precipitate, which contribute to a haze in the
final beer if not removed. In spite of this, the finished beer continues
changing and a new period of aging starts. Compared to most other
alcoholic beverages, beer is unique because it is unstable when in
the final package. During storage (aging), beer quality is gradually
decreased and the production of stale flavor, the formation of haze,
and browning occur. The flavor of in-pack beer changes with time
of storage. Beer aging is considered to be a major quality problem
since the aging flavors are mostly experienced as unpleasant [4].
Therefore, flavor stability, an important quality criterion for beer
during the aging process, has become one of the most important
topics in brewing research over the past few years [5–11].
Beer flavor is conventionally detected through the combination
of common analytical tools (e.g. gas chromatography) and human
sensory panels. These approaches are expensive and time con-

0925-4005/$ – see front matter © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.snb.2011.06.036
52 M. Ghasemi-Varnamkhasti et al. / Sensors and Actuators B 159 (2011) 51–59

suming. Also, GC–MS requires specialized personnel. Organoleptic

panels can also give a lot of information about the characteristics
of the beer but this method has some drawbacks such as asses-
sor fatigue and subjectivity. In addition, GC–MS and sensory panel
evaluation cannot be used as on line in brewery.
The subjectivity and low reproducibility of sensory evaluation
have been pointed out as faults. To help solving these problems,
an objective evaluation method using electronic nose (machine
olfaction) has recently attracted particular attention [7].
The development of artificial sensors, such as electronic noses is
a promising direction to evaluate the process of aging of beers. The
advantages of this methodology are the rapidity (on line analysis),
the accurate analysis for quality control, and the inexpensive and
simple instrumentation and in the present, these sensors are com-
plement to the traditional chemical and sensory analysis [12–15].
The typical drawbacks of using a MOS sensor array are the sensors
drift, humidity dependence and high operating temperature. These
problems can be minimized while they are taking into account the
sampling procedure or their effects could be corrected after the
measurements by the appropriate software [16–19].
Nonetheless, optimization of the brewing process with respect
to flavor stability requires a clear insight of the amount of flavor
changes during aging. Some research works on beer using elec-
tronic nose have been reported earlier [20–27] while there exists
one report on aging detection of alcoholic beers in the literature
[28]. This work is based on the combination of electronic nose with
other apparatus and the authors aimed their study to get the finger-
prints of the volatile compounds in beers to find the discrimination
among different beer samples for recognition among brands and
storage conditions.
To date, no study has been published on the aging fingerprint
characterization of non alcoholic beer by electronic nose which is
probably due to the complexity of the matrix and the variety of the
components present therein as well as low level of consumption
of this kind of beer encourage the researchers to focus more on
alcoholic beers. However, because of increasing trend in consump-
tion of non alcoholic beer in recent years, the quality enhancement
of such beer has been of great interest to the brewers. So, quality
evaluation of non alcoholic beer has a high potential to be studied
by electronic nose since the information obtained on aroma could
give an insight into process control in non alcoholic beer production Fig. 1. (a) Schematic view of the electronic nose system and (b) test chamber.
and a brewer can check the non alcoholic beer production line that
whether flavor or aroma attributes of the non alcoholic beer pro-
cessed are within the categories considered or not [7]. Also, non sheets (working temperature was within 300–450 ◦ C). Two other
alcoholic beer production manager decide about the items con- types of sensors, a Figaro humidity sensor and a National Semi-
tributing to the beer flavor quality. On the other hand, for going conductor temperature sensor are placed in the test chamber for
to a comprehensive conclusion on the aging process of non alco- checking the gas relative humidity ratio and the environment tem-
holic beer, the aging fingerprint of alcoholic beer should be studied perature. More details and descriptions about the system in our
and compared as well to get valid information on the flavor stabil- laboratory have earlier been reported [29,30].
ity of this type of beer. Therefore, the objective of this study was to Two different beer types were provided in this research: alco-
design, develop and implement a MOS based electronic nose sys- holic and non alcoholic beers from the same brand. To mimic the
tem coupled with artificial neural networks to aging fingerprint long period storage, the bottled beer samples were stored in an
detection in alcoholic and non alcoholic beers in order to address oven (in 40 ◦ C, in dark). This procedure is known as forced aging in
the aroma stability of the beer types studied.

Table 1
Sensor array used in the electronic nose system.
2. Materials and methods
Sensor Description
Five metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) gas sensors were sup- 1: SPMW0 Tin dioxide, monitors the changes of
plied from FIS (Osaka, Japan) and Figaro Engineering (Glenview, various gases emitted during cooking
USA) companies and the test chamber of the electronic nose sys- 2: SPAQ1 Tin dioxide semiconductor sensor, very
high sensitivity to volatile organic
tem was, therefore, fabricated (Fig. 1). The sensors included in the compounds (VOCs) and solvents
test chamber of the system and their specifications are presented 3: TGS2620 Alcohol, toluene, xylene, other volatile
in Table 1. These sensors are placed in a half bridge and are supplied organic vapors
with a 10 V circuit voltage and a 5 V heating voltage providing an 4: TGS825 Hydrogen sulfide
5: TGS880 Volatile vapors from food (alcohol)
operating temperature according to the companies operating data
 M. Ghasemi-Varnamkhasti et al. / Sensors and Actuators B 159 (2011) 51–59
Fig. 2. The signals of the electronic nose studied: (a) one cycle of injection and
purging signal related to SPMW0 sensor and (b) stability of the instrumentation
systems in successive measurements.
the literature [10,31,32]. The interval time of 5 days was considered
among the experiments. The beer samples were prepared for the
experiments of electronic nose according to the literature [33]. For
this purpose, an ultrasonic bath for 10 min was used to remove CO2
from the sample and the beers were then left to reach the ambient
temperature. Also, dynamic injection after static headspace sam-
pling was considered in this study. The carrier gas was synthetic air
for preserving the beer samples. The amount of 50 ml of beer sample
was kept in a 250 ml bottle at 25 ◦ C for 45 min in order to provide a
vapor phase in equilibrium with the liquid. In this system, the syn-
thetic air is brought into a sample container based on the bubbler
principle and then mixed with the beer headspace and the mixture
portion is therefore, controlled by a mass flow controller (Brooks,
Serv Instrumentation, Irigny, UK). These portions were determined
as 100 (synthetic air) and 80 (synthetic air) + 20 (sample headspace)
ml/min in purging and injection phases, respectively. For purging
the sensor array, the electric valves were switched during 1300s
and dynamic injection of the beer headspace was then carried out
for 360 s (Fig. 2). This procedure was done in seven replicates for
each beer sample. To remove the effects of sensors drift, sensor
array were calibrated with a blank solution (4.4% (v/v) (for alcoholic
beer samples) ethanol in deionised water). This protocol has been
used and reported for wine in bibliography [34,35]. All the sensor
output signals were collected by use of a data acquisition board
(LabView, National Instruments). For instance, the sensor finger-
prints of SPMW0 for alcoholic and TGS 825 for non alcoholic beers
53
Fig. 3. Fingerprints of beer headspace during the aging: (a) non alcoholic sample
(response of SPMW0) and (b) alcoholic samples (response of TGS 825).
during the aging have been illustrated in Fig. 3a and b, respectively.
However, the features corresponding to individual sensors were
then extracted and the steady state of the signals was addressed in
feature extraction [36,37]. Then, the following equation was used.
Rsample
F= (1)
Rcalibration
where Rsample is the minimum resistance of the sensor during per-
forming the measurement protocol and Rcalibration is that of the
sensor exposed to an ethanol solution. Autoscaling as a data pre-
processing technique was considered and the software of Matlab
7.6 (The Mathworks Inc., Natick, MA, USA) was used to analyze the
data collected and to perform artificial neural network as well.
In this work, Principal Components Analysis (PCA) and Linear
Discriminant Analysis (LDA) as the data reduction methodologies
are used to reduce the number of variables of the dataset and retain-
ing most of the information in the data. Score plots of the data
are illustrated and the PCA and LDA results are then confirmed by
artificial neural networks.
A probabilistic neural network (PNN) is used for classification
purposes. The architecture of PNN is illustrated in Fig. 4. The PNN is
included three layers: the input one has three neurons, correspond-
ing to the three principal components; the hidden layer, with radial
basis transfer functions, has the same number of neurons that num-
54 M. Ghasemi-Varnamkhasti et al. / Sensors and Actuators B 159 (2011) 51–59

Fig. 4. Architecture of a probabilistic neural network (PNN).

ber of training vectors and a competitive layer in the output. For

checking the performance of the network, leave one out cross vali-
dation method is employed to the network. Leave one out consists
of training N distinct nets (in this case, N is number of measure-
ments) by using N − 1 training vectors; while the validation of the 2
trained net is performed by using the remaining vector, excluded A0
from the training set. This procedure is repeated N times until all 1.5 A1
vectors are validated [35,37–41]. Also, a backpropagation (BP) net- A2
A3
work topology is formed by three layers: the input layer has three 1
A4
neurons related to the first three components, a variable number
A5
in hidden layer, and six neurons in the output layer relevant to the 0.5
PC2 (23%)

aged beer classes (Fig. 5). The network considers the inputs and
compares its outputs in opposition to the desired outputs. Errors 0
are then propagated back through the system, causing the system
to adjust the weights that control the network. This process takes -0.5
place over and over as the weights are repeatedly tweaked. Dur-
ing the network training, the same set of data is processed many -1
times as the connection weights are always refined [42–44]. In final,
classification accuracy is computed for each method. -1.5

3. Results and discussion -2

-6 -4 -2 0 2 4 6
PC1 (68%)
PCA results are illustrated in Fig. 6 in which aging classes of
alcoholic and non alcoholic beers are seen. The first two princi- (a)
pal components account the maximum amount of variance in the
original dataset. The components accounting for a large variation 3
N0
2.5
N1
2 N2
N3
1.5 N4
N5
1
PC2 (29%)

0.5

-0.5

-1

-1.5

-2
-4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
PC1 (58%)

(b)
Fig. 6. PCA plots of aging fingerprint characterization for (a) alcoholic beer and (b)
Fig. 5. Architecture of a backpropagation (BP) neural network. non alcoholic beer.
 M. Ghasemi-Varnamkhasti et al. / Sensors and Actuators B 159 (2011) 51–59 55

in the data are known as the new axis to attain the plots of the beer 0.4
classes called as score plot (Fig. 6). The PCA score plots of PC1–PC2 4
account for 91% and 87% of variance for alcoholic and non alco- 0.2
5
holic beers, respectively. The first class seen in the left side of the
score plot is relevant to the fresh class in such a way identifica- 3
0
tion power of A0 (fresh alcoholic beer) from other classes is lesser

Loads 2 (23%)
than that of N0 (fresh non alcoholic beer) as shown in Fig. 6a and
-0.2
b, respectively. As seen in Fig. 6, the aged beer classes of alcoholic
beer are overlapped showing the more stability of alcoholic beer 1
in aging process compared with non alcoholic beer. This observa- -0.4
tion confirms the profound role of alcohol in beer to enhance the
beer stability in aging process as pointed out in literature [45–47]. -0.6
This fact is documented that ethanol has a key role in the forma-
tion of the characteristic background aroma of beer. When alcohol
-0.8
is removed from regular beer by use of different techniques of deal-
2
coholization, partial aroma loss occurred. Therefore, non alcoholic
beers do not represent the aroma components produced through -1
0.1 0.15 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5 0.55 0.6
fermentation in a proper concentration and balance. Hence, in the Loads 1 (68%)
absence of ethanol, beer exhibits immature aroma even after pack-
ing [48]. Also, as seen in Fig. 6b, for non alcoholic beer, the speed of (a)
aroma change in early stages of the aging process is more than that
0.8
of in late stages that this phenomenon seems to be related to the
role of alcohol in beer but in contrast aroma fingerprint of alcoholic 5
beer is more stable in early stages of aging process (Fig. 6a) even 0.6
though in general, the speed of aging is dependent on many factors 1
such as storage temperature and beer composition [4]. 0.4
Besides the aged beer classes, the sensors or variables could be 2
Loads 2 (29%)

depicted in the same plot, named loadings, by the values of their

coefficients of the eigenvector equations. As seen in Fig. 7, the load-
ings plot shows the relative contribution of the sensors used in
electronic nose system to each principal component: the higher
the loading value of a specific sensor (e.g. SPAQ1 and TGS 2620)
on a principal component, the more sensor contribution with this
component. Selecting the most important sensors contributing in
clearly discriminated classes of beer is helpful while we want to
consider the transient state of the sensors instead of steady state.
For this goal, many variables depending on the technique used
can be extracted and it is obvious that having the most impor-
tant variables could have a significant role in computation stage
of the data because sometimes considering many variables to data
analysis maybe led to some problems like over fitting in analysis;
for instance neural networks are normally simple to implement
using a standard program with a user friendly interface. One prob-
lem is often that networks based on many input variables need a
long computing time. Also, the loadings plot of this data could give
us this information that which temperature operation should be
changed or which sensors could be removed from the array while
we want to reduce the fabrication cost of the sensor array of the
electronic nose system.
LDA has been also employed in the current study, like PCA, as a
feature reduction method determining a smaller dimension hyper
plane on which the points will be projected from the higher dimen-
sion. However, whereas PCA picks a direction that keep maximal
structure among the data in a lower dimension, LDA picks a direc-
tion that achieves maximum separation among the classes given.
The results obtained by LDA showed a more appropriate classifica-
tion compared to PCA results as illustrated in Fig. 8. In LDA method,
the variance between beer classes as well as the variance within
beer classes is maximized and looks for a rational rule to recognize
between them by use of the formation of the linear functions of the
data maximizing the ratio of the between-class sum of squares to
the within-class sum of squares. Therefore, the linear functions are
limited to be orthogonal. When the linear functions are found, an
observation is classified through computation of its Euclidean dis-
tance from the class centroids, projected onto the subspace which is
defined by a subset of the linear functions. Afterwards, the observa-
0.2
0
3
-0.2
-0.4
4
-0.6
-0.8 -0.6 -0.4 -0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6
Loads 1 (58%)
(b)
Fig. 7. PCA loading plots of aging fingerprint characterization for (a) alcoholic beer
and (b) non alcoholic beer.
tion is assigned to the closest class. In this study, the performance
of this method was assessed in such as way the class centroids
were estimated using a leave one out cross validation method as
shown in Fig. 8a and c. The class centroids are computed with-
out reference to the missing data point as well as each observation
is removed in turn from the data set. The excluded observation
is then classified considering these new class centroids. The data
point is then replaced and the next observation removed from the
data set accordingly. When all observations have been left out in
turn, this process is stopped. Thus, the percentage of the observa-
tions correctly classified can be determined via comparison of the
true class membership with that estimated by LDA. This presents an
appropriate criterion of the reliability of the classification method
[49–53].
Then, the PCA and LDA results were confirmed with the ANN
studied. In the training of the BP network, different number of neu-
rons in the hidden layer was tried. In addition, several activation
functions (pureline, tansig and hard-limit) were tested for the out-
put layer. The optimal number turned out to be 17 neurons by
several times tested and better results obtained through pureline
activation function. Finally, the classification success was found to
be 90% and 100% for the test set in total for alcoholic and non alco-
56 M. Ghasemi-Varnamkhasti et al. / Sensors and Actuators B 159 (2011) 51–59

2.5 1.5

A0 A0
2
A1 A1
A2 1 A2
1.5 A3 A3
A4 A4
1 A5 A5
0.5
LDF2

DF2
0.5

0 0

-0.5
-0.5
-1

-1.5 -1
-2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 -2 -1.5 -1 -0.5 0 0.5 1 1.5 2
LDF1 DF1

(a) (b)

5 3

N0 2.5 N0
4 N1 N1
N2 2 N2
N3 N3
3
N4 1.5 N4
N5 N5
1
2
LDF2

DF2

0.5
1
0

0 -0.5

-1
-1
-1.5

-2 -2
-4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 -4 -3 -2 -1 0 1 2
LDF1 DF1

(c) (d)
Fig. 8. Score plots of aging treatments: (a) alcoholic beer by LDA, (b) alcoholic beer by LDA without validation, (c) non alcoholic beer by LDA and (d) non alcoholic beer by
LDA without validation.

holic beers, respectively (Tables 2 and 3). The similar results were
obtained using PNN as 83% and 100%, respectively for aged alco-
holic and non alcoholic beer classes. The result of the test set is
given in Tables 4 and 5.
In this research effort, employment of such chemometric meth-
ods showed the capability of the electronic nose to recognize
alcoholic and non alcoholic beers in terms of aroma changes in
aging process. As found in this study, the aroma fingerprint of the
beer samples changes in aging process mimicking the long period
storage [31]. What happens in this period is far complicated to
interpret exactly because the flavor of beer is affected by a complex
mixture of several volatile chemical compounds as very hetero-
geneous groups (e.g. alcohols, esters, sulfur compounds, ketones,
aldehydes, etc.). These compounds are in very different concen-

Table 2 Table 3
Confusion matrix with 17 neurons in hidden layer for the BP classification of alco- Confusion matrix with 17 neurons in hidden layer for the BP classification of non
holic beer in aging process. alcoholic beer in aging process.

Real/predicted A0 A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 Real/predicted N0 N1 N2 N3 N4 N5

A0 6 1 0 0 0 0 N0 7 0 0 0 0 0
A1 0 7 0 0 0 0 N1 0 7 0 0 0 0
A2 0 0 6 1 0 0 N2 0 0 7 0 0 0
A3 0 1 0 6 0 0 N3 0 0 0 7 0 0
A4 0 0 0 1 6 0 N4 0 0 0 0 7 0
A5 0 0 0 0 0 7 N5 0 0 0 0 0 7

Success rate (%): 90.47 Success rate (%): 100

A0: fresh and A1, A2, A3, A4, A5: aged beers. N0: fresh and N1, N2, N3, N4, N5: aged beers.
 M. Ghasemi-Varnamkhasti et al. / Sensors and Actuators B 159 (2011) 51–59 57

Table 4 4. Conclusion
Confusion matrix for the PNN classification of alcoholic beer in aging process.

Real/predicted A0 A1 A2 A3 A4 A5 Characterization of the aging phenomenon in beer could be

A0 7 0 0 0 0 0 helpful for the development of appropriate technological process
A1 0 7 0 0 0 0 improvements to monitor its particular flavor stability in brew-
A2 0 1 3 1 2 0 ery. An electronic nose system was used to detect the fingerprint
A3 0 0 0 6 1 0 of volatile compounds present in the headspace of aged beer by
A4 0 1 1 0 5 0
means of an array of semi selective sensors. The results revealed
A5 0 0 0 0 0 7
that the alcoholic beer is more stable in aging process compared
Success rate (%): 83.33
with non alcoholic beer. Also, application of PNN and BP neural
A0: fresh and A1, A2, A3, A4, A5: aged beers. networks showed high classification accuracy for the characteri-
zation of beers used in such a way full accuracy was found for the
non alcoholic beer classes. This research suggests the application of
Table 5
Confusion matrix for the PNN classification of non alcoholic beer in aging process.
electronic nose system for the detection of aroma changes in-pack
beer during aging process for the evaluation of beer shelf life. This
Real/predicted N0 N1 N2 N3 N4 N5 study also shows an outlook for the application of electronic nose
N0 7 0 0 0 0 0 to characterize the aging process after fermentation stage. Aging
N1 0 7 0 0 0 0 process after fermentation in brewing line is very critical for the
N2 0 0 7 0 0 0
achievement of beer with high quality [8]. In recent years, combi-
N3 0 0 0 7 0 0
N4 0 0 0 0 7 0 nation of electronic tongue and eye with electronic nose has been
N5 0 0 0 0 0 7 reported in the literature [60,61]. This could be coupled with the
results of the current study as well because monitoring the odor,
Success rate (%): 100
color and the taste of the beer could achieve more successful char-
N0: fresh and N1, N2, N3, N4, N5: aged beers.
acterization of beer in aging process.

trations (from several mg L-1 to a few ng L-1 ) [54]. However, it is Acknowledgments

clear that the vector of flavor change is downward, through stal-
ing of beer. Moreover, other quality characteristics of beer, such as
clarity, color, and foam, are also expected to deteriorate in aging
process. Some of the higher alcohols present in alcoholic beer are
gradually transformed into aldehydes and ketones during the pro-
cess of aging. Also, molecular oxygen present in beer does not seem
to oxidize higher alcohols, except in the presence of melanoidins
formed from reducing sugars and amino compounds and polyphe-
nols such as catechin and quercetin may also catalyze the oxidation
of higher alcohols [4,55]. Also, it was found that a non alcoholic
beer has lesser stability that could be associated with the absence
of alcohol. The level of stability of such beer could be revealed
or characterized by electronic nose as done in this study. Also,
sulfur dioxide content in beers could be controlled according to
the electronic nose results for the aged beers. This compound has
recently attracted attention due to its status as an allergen, which
has meant that it has come under regulatory control. Probably the
most significant impact that sulfur dioxide has on beer flavor is
that it helps beer to retain its freshness in-pack meaning more sta-
bility in aging process. It is thought that this is due to its ability
to form bisulfite addition products with aldehydes (reducing their
flavor activity) and by acting as an antioxidant, either as is or as an
addition product with acetaldehyde [1,4,6,48,55–57]. By the way,
many factors contribute to the aging of beer and can be basically
divided into intrinsic factors (i.e. compositional ones) and extrinsic
factors (i.e. events and conditions out with the beer but to which
the beer is exposed). Although the formula makes no attempt to
weigh the various parameters, it is clear that a change in any one
of them will impact flavor stability. Also, it is worth mentioning
that the composition of beer is established on the basis of the raw
materials used in its manufacture and on the processing proce-
dures employed. From grain and hops growing in the field right
way through to closing the final container, there are forces at play
that can impact the quality and the ensuing shelf life of the prod-
uct [58,59]. Therefore, using electronic nose to aging fingerprint
characterization of beer in aging process, a brewer could obtain
valuable information on the level of stability of beer to manage
or control the factors contributing to flavor and aroma stability of
beer.
The support of the Iran National Science Foundation (INSF) is
gratefully appreciated regarding the finance of this research. Also,
the authors would like to thank Professor Guy Bourhis, the director
of LASC at the Universite de Metz, France for all helps regarding this
research idea. Also, the kind helps of the staff of Universite de Metz
especially Mrs. Crepet are gratefully appreciated. The kind advice
of Professor Dr. Karl Siebert in Cornell University, New York on beer
chemistry is acknowledged.
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Biographies
Mahdi Ghasemi-Varnamkhasti was born in Isfahan (Iran), in 1983. He received
the master in Mechanics of Agricultural Machinery Engineering in 2005 from the
University of Tehran (Iran). He is presently a Ph.D. student of the Department of
Agricultural Machinery Engineering at the University of Tehran. His current field
of research interests consists of aspects related to the use of electronic nose and
bioelectronic tongue (biosensor array) for the monitoring beer quality during aging
process. At the present moment he has obtained a lecturer position at the Sharekord
University (Iran). He is author or co-author of over 20 publications.
Seyed Saeid Mohtasebi received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Mechanical Engineer-
ing from Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran in 1988 and 1991, respectively.
He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Concordia University, Quebec,
Canada in 1997. He is currently a Professor in Department of Agricultural Machin-
ery Engineering in University of Tehran. His current research interests are control,
vibration, dynamic systems and machine vision.
Maryam Siadat received her engineering diploma in electronics in 1983 and her
Ph.D. in Biomedical Electronics engineering in 1989 from the Polytechnic Institute
of Lorraine (ENSEM- INPL) at Nancy, France. She is an associate professor at the
University of Metz since 1991 and her research interests are in gas detection, sig-
nal and data processing, sensor characterization and numerical electronics circuits’
development.
Jesus Lozano received the B.Sc. degree in electronic engineering in 2001 and Ph.D.
degree in 2005 from Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. He has worked in
instrumentation systems at Electronics Department of the University Complutense
of Madrid, in chemical sensors and electronic noses at the Laboratorio de Sensores,
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientı̌ıficas (CSIC), Madrid, in control, modelling
and simulation at Naval Engineering School of Universidad Politecnica de Madrid.
Presently, he works as professor at Escuela de Ingenierıas Industriales of Universidad
de Extremadura, Badajoz. His research interests include pattern recognition tech-
niques, aroma extraction techniques applied to electronic noses, instrumentation
and measurement systems, and chemical sensors.
Hojat Ahmadi received his Ph.D. degree in agricultural machinery engineering in
2001 from Tarbiat Modares University, Iran. He is currently an associate professor
at the University of Tehran and his research interests are condition monitoring and
nanotechnology and its application to agricultural issues.
 M. Ghasemi-Varnamkhasti et al. / Sensors and Actuators B 159 (2011) 51–59 59

Seyed Hadi Razavi received his B.Sc. degree in food technology & engineering in
1984 from University of Tehran and his Ph.D. degree in food process engineering &
biotechnology in 2004 from the Polytechnic Institute of Lorraine (ENSAIA-INPL) at
Nancy, France. He is currently an associate professor at the University of Tehran and
his research interests are in food biofilms and fermented and probiotic beverages,
batch, fed batch and continuous bioreactors with free of immobilized cells, dairy
and non dairy functional.
Amadou Dicko received his Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry in 1989 from Uni-
versity of Perpignan Via Domitia at Perpignan, France. He is currently a Professor
at the Laboratoire de Chimie et de Méthodologies pour l’Environnement (LCME) in
the University Paul Verlaine-Metz. His research interests are in extraction methods,
identification and characterization of secondary metabolites applied to polyphenolic
compounds.