Novel optochemical method for the non destructive determination of oxygen in encapsulated beer bottles

The applicability of optochemical oxygen sensors has been demonstrated for a wide range of different applications. One of these applications is the non-destructive monitoring over time of the oxygen content inside transparent glass bottles for the brewery industry. Oxygen in alcoholic beverages is responsible for a variety of processes, which cause the ageing of the products and consequently the shortening of their shelf lifetimes. The oxygen concentration in the headspace of the filled beer bottles results from the remaining oxygen in the headspace after the high pressure water jet injection during the filling process, from the equilibrium between the inward oxygen diffusion through the crown caps and on the oxygen consumption due to the oxidization of beer or of the oxygen scavengers eventually inserted in the crown caps. In this paper we describe a non-destructive optochemical method for monitoring the oxygen content in the head space of filled beer bottles. It allows investigations on the oxygen diffusion through different types of crown caps and on the oxygen consumption due to scavengers and beer itself.