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Abstract(s)
Honey presents a higher amount of carbohydrates (60-82%) [1] mainly fructose and glucose and other
minor compounds (proteins, enzymes free amino acids, essential minerals, vitamins and polyphenols).
Given their higher amount of sugar, yeast could be convert them into alcohol through the process of
fermentation. The more usual alcoholic beverage produced from the honey is mead, however, some
spirits are also produced, but no scientific research is known in order to characterize this beverage. The
aim of this work is to characterize the distillation process of honey spirit resulting from distillation of mead
obtained from different honey raw material: Lavandula honey; Castanea honey and a mixture of waxes
and honey resulting from the bee-keeper uncaps process.
In the distillation process different fraction were collected during the time. The alcohol strength was
determined by distillation and electronic densimetry. The volatile compounds of the samples
(acetaldehyde; ethyl acetate; methanol; 1–propanol; 2-methyl-1-propanol; 1–butanol and isoamyl
alcohols) were analysed by gas chromatography-flame ionization detection (GC-FID) [2].
The honey spirit does not present methanol in the majority of the analysed fractions or it is present in a
very low quantity (<0.062 g/L) what is an advantage of this beverage in comparison with other distillates.
The raw-material used in the production of the beverage as well as the distillation time has a significant
effect in the composition of the fractions collected during the distillation process (Table 1).
The different volatile profile suggests a different quality given the botanical origin of honey used as raw
material. The production of honey spirit from waxes and honey resulting from the uncap process has a
good quality.
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Citation
Santos, Regina; Caldeira, Ilda; Pereira, Ana Paula; Estevinho, Leticia M.; Ofélia Anjos (2016). Distillation process characterization for honey spirit production. In Gomes, Helder; Ferreira, Olga ; Barreira, João C.M.; Amaral, J.S. (Ed.) XXII Encontro Luso-Galego de Química: livro de resumos. Bragança: Sociedade Portuguesa de Química. ISBN 978-989-8124-17-3