Low-Cost Electronic Nose for Identification of Wood Species in Which Brazilian Sugar Cane Spirit Was Aged

Many popular alcoholic beverages, such as Brazilian sugar cane spirit (cachaça), are aged in wood casks to achieve a smoother and more pleasant taste. The type of wood plays an important role in improving the quality of the spirit, with oak being the most widely used. Due to its elevated price and poor local availability, oak has been gradually replaced in Brazil by other woods, such as Amburana cearensis (Amburana), Cariniana legalis (Jequitibá), Hymenaea courbaril (Jatobá), and Ocotea odorifera (Cinnamon sassafras). For general purposes in beverage quality control and wood identification, and using ethanol/water extracts (cachaça 47% v/v) as a model, this article describes the construction of a low-cost electronic nose that quickly identifies the wood species that was used for aging a cachaça sample. The nose is made of an array of four chemoresistive conductive polymer gas sensors. Principal component and leave-one-out analyses showed perfect classification of all tested samples.