Higher Alcohol Analysis of Distilled Spirits Using GC-FID

This isn’t really about beer but it is about whisky, and chances are if you’re at this page you like me enough to read about me talking about any kind of alcohol-related science so here goes. This is my final lab report from my independently designed and performed senior project. I chose to use gas chromatography to analyze the higher alcohol profiles of 3 different scotch whiskys of increasing age to try and determine the effects of extended oak barrel aging. I won’t go too much into the science since I explain it in the report, but (spoiler alert), my results ultimately indicated that there are no clear trends in higher alcohol profiles over time. This was mildly disappointing, but my project was still a success due to the sheer amount of data I was able to collect and because of the method’s power in quantifying higher alcohols; I wasn’t able to quantify any specific trends but I was able to easily distinguish my samples from each other and from the few other types of whisky I tested. Anyway, without much more ado, I’ve attached my presentation of my paper and my paper in a merged .pdf file.

I encourage you to read it and if you have any questions or want to see more of my data (there’s tons more), contact me via Facebook or email.