Introduction

In terms of both its physiological effects as well as its impact on flavor perception, ethanol is the defining component of alcoholic beverages. While ethanol’s effect on alcoholic beverage systems has been studied across a variety of disciplines, a comprehensive review of the literature is lacking. The aim of this paper is to review the current literature on ethanol’s effect on flavor perception.

Methods

This paper reviews the literature, exploring ethanol’s effects on the areas of physiochemical properties, instrumental measurements of flavor release, and sensory evaluation across a variety of alcoholic beverages including beer, wine, and distilled beverages and how changes in ethanol concentration can affect flavor perception.

Results

Physicochemical properties such as the molecular level structure of water/ethanol matrices are significantly altered as a function of ethanol concentration. Of particular importance to flavor perception is the effect of ethanol on the release of aroma compounds into the headspace of the beverage. Both static and dynamic headspace systems have been studied. In general, increasing the concentration of ethanol decreases the volatile headspace in static systems, while it tends to increase the volatile headspace in dynamic systems. Most importantly, sensory studies have demonstrated that ethanol concentration significantly changes the flavor profile of beverages to the point where sensory panelists are able to identify and articulate these differences.

Conclusions

The current literature demonstrates that ethanol can have a huge impact of flavor release and sensory perception of alcoholic beverages. Additionally monitoring ethanol’s effects in systems as close to real life as possible (i.e., dynamic vs static evaluation) is important. Even with the extensive knowledge in the area, there are still many gaps in our understanding of ethanol’s effects on the flavor of alcoholic beverages.

Implications

Ethanol has been shown to have a tremendous influence on flavor release and subsequent chemosensory perception in alcoholic beverages. Changes in ethanol concentration can affect consumers’ perception of alcoholic beverages in terms of aroma, taste, and mouthfeel.

中文翻译：

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乙醇对酒精饮料风味感知的影响

介绍

就其生理作用及其对风味感知的影响而言，乙醇是酒精饮料的主要成分。尽管跨学科研究了乙醇对酒精饮料系统的影响，但缺乏对文献的全面综述。本文的目的是回顾有关乙醇对风味感知的影响的现有文献。

方法

本文回顾了文献，探讨了乙醇对各种酒精饮料（包括啤酒，葡萄酒和蒸馏饮料）的理化特性，风味释放的仪器测量以及感官评估的影响，以及乙醇浓度的变化如何影响风味感知。

结果

水/乙醇基质的分子化学结构等物理化学性质随乙醇浓度的变化而显着改变。对于风味感知特别重要的是乙醇对芳香化合物向饮料顶部空间释放的影响。已经研究了静态和动态顶空系统。通常，增加乙醇的浓度会减少静态系统中的挥发性顶空，而它往往会增加动态系统中的挥发性顶空。最重要的是，感官研究表明，乙醇浓度会显着改变饮料的风味特征，以至感官专门小组成员能够识别并阐明这些差异。

结论

当前的文献表明，乙醇可以对酒精饮料的风味释放和感觉感知产生巨大影响。另外，监测乙醇对系统的影响尽可能接近实际生活（即动态与静态评估）也很重要。即使在该领域具有广泛的知识，我们对乙醇对酒精饮料风味的影响的理解仍然存在许多差距。

含义

已显示乙醇对酒精饮料中的风味释放和随后的化学感官知觉具有巨大影响。乙醇浓度的变化会影响消费者对香气，口感和口感的含酒精饮料感知。