On-site monitoring of critical wort parameters during industrial mashing using miniature NIR spectrometers

Abstract The objective of this study was to validate the application of near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy for on-site rapid analysis of wort quality parameters during commercial mashing operations. Three miniature NIR devices were evaluated to simultaneously quantify original gravity, maltose, and α-amino nitrogen (FAN) in wort samples collected throughout the mashing stage. Multivariate calibration models based on partial least squares (PLS) and support vector regression (SVR) were developed to correlate spectral data with reference measurements. Coefficient of determination (R2) obtained by Matrix-F system combined with PLS/SVR exceeded 0.99/0.99, 0.99/0.99, 0.90/0.88 and both root mean square error of calibration (RMSEC) and root mean square error of prediction (RMSEP) were below 0.16/0.22%, 0.15/0.21%, 0.009/0.0181% for original gravity, maltose and α-amino nitrogen(FAN), respectively. The RPD values obtained > 3.0 for all parameters and Q2 values ranged from 0.85 to 0.98. The results indicate that fourier transform near-infrared spectrometer (FT-NIR) has significant potential for real-time monitoring of fermentation parameters, enabling breweries to achieve more consistent product quality while reducing laboratory analysis costs.