The Qualitative and Quantitative Measurement of Peat Smoke on Distiller's Malt*

In the course of developing a novel peating process it became apparent that the present methods for determining the intensity of peat smoke on distiller's malt are inadequate. While the colorimetric test for peat phenols is fairly accurate at low levels, it can give misleading results with highly peated malts. Furthermore, the 4-aminophenazone reagent used in this test is not sensitive to some of the major phenol constituents of peat smoke. New qualitative gas chromatographic techniques, which monitor a wider spectrum of peat smoke constituents, are now presented together with some suggested improvements to the existing quantitative colorometric analysis.