ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, consumer complaints related to off-flavors of food and beverages have become one of the most common problems confronting the industry. An off-flavor is an atypical odor resulting from degradation of food components (e.g., lipid oxidation, microbiological spoilage, the Maillard reaction), incidental contamination from the environment (e.g., packaging materials), and loss of key odorants (Sakamaki et al., 2011; Ridgway, Lalljie, and Smith, 2009). Typically, their presence in an alcoholic beverage does not represent a safety risk to the consumer, but the perception of low quality and adverse publicity can be tremendously costly to the industry (Ridgway, Lalljie, and Smith, 2009). In this sense, a lot of research has been done to develop and implement preventive and remediation approaches for reducing and removing off-flavors from alcoholic beverages without causing a negative impact on the sensorial profile. The preventive actions are focused on their hygienic nature, namely sanitized front-end processing equipment, whereas the remediation approach can be organized into two groups, namely those intended to decrease the headspace off-flavor concentration and those directed to the remove of off-flavors from the 596alcoholic beverages. Most of the proposed remediation approaches are not yet authorized by the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV). Despite decades of research, deterioration of flavor, including loss of fresh aromas, and the appearance of off-flavors, is still probably the greatest challenge for breweries and wineries. As stated above, several biochemical and chemical mechanisms are involved in the formation of off-flavors in alcoholic beverages, and the most common are reported below.
