Rapid analysis of coffee flavour by gas Chromatography using a pyro- lyzer

Ogawa & Co., Ltd., 6-32-9 Akabanenishi. Kita-ku, Tokyo 115 (Japan) (Received December l6th. I986) Gianturco1 discussed the Formation and rate or production or volatile compounds during the roasting coffee beans. As the roasting time was increased. both the number and size or the chromatographic peaks increased. This phenomenon indicates that most components or coffee aroma arise from the roasting process1-2. Baltes3 has recently described phenol formation during coffee rusting. The Curie-point principle has been widely used as a method for analyzing non-volatile materials4j. First a sample is rapidly heated to a temperature that is sufficient to decompose it to volatile substances. These are then analyzed by gas chromatography (GC). Colenutt and Thorburn6 adopted a conventional pyrolysis GC system for the analysis or volatile compounds. In their system, desorption is achieved in the pyrolysis unit, but no pyrolysis occurs. This paper presents a simple and rapid method for analyzing the flavour or coffee grounds using a gas chromatograph equipped with a pyrolyzer. The results obtained with this method were compared with those from conventional methods. i.e., headspace analysis and simultaneous distillation-extraction (SDE).