Determination of Ethanol in Food by Enzymatic Method Enzytec™ Liquid Ethanol, Collaborative Study: Final Action 2017.07

BACKGROUND: Enzytec™ Liquid Ethanol was approved as AOAC Official Method(SM)2017.07 First Action in September 2017 and is now further characterized by a collaborative study using the manual and automated version of the test. METHOD: It is applicable to quantify ethanol in diluted or undiluted kombucha, fruit juices, vegetable juices, and alcohol-free beer samples around 0.5% ABV within 20 min using two ready-to-use reagents and measurement of absorbance at 340 nm. RESULTS: The overall relative reproducibility standard deviation across a wide concentration range for kombucha was calculated to be 6.99% by modeling the reproducibility standard deviation by the mean concentration for each of the six kombucha pairs by a linear regression. Analysis of juices and beer showed an overall higher variation with an estimated overall RSD(R) value by regression of 10.1%. Mean recovery of aqueous ethanol reference solutions tested by each participant was between 100 and 103%. CONCLUSIONS: The data obtained by this collaborative study show that the Enzytec(TM)Liquid Ethanol is suitable to quantify ethanol from matrices representing important alcohol-free liquid food categories. HIGHLIGHTS: The Enzytec(TM)Liquid Ethanol was approved as AOAC Method 2017.07 Final Action.