The cones of hops Humulus lupulus are grown for the bitter acids, which are used by brewers to give beer its particular flavour. Phytoconsult has the opportunity to isolate and purify these bitter acids, for use as standards. The main bitter acids are:

Using a Centrifugal Partition Chromatograph (CPC) and consecutive HPLC analysis of the fractions obtained, the 6 bitter acids can be separated. A >95% purity (calculated as bitter acid) can be guaranteed for all of these compounds (except for adlupulone). Because of the CPC's relatively high sample load capacity, one run may yield as much as several 100s mg of every bitter acid.
Also for the separation of other compounds from large sample volumina, the CPC could turn out to be very useful.

Iso-alpha acids are the compounds, actually responsible for the bitter taste of beer. They are formed by degradation of the alpha acids during the brewing process. For the determination of these six important constituents, we have an HPLC system available which gives an almost complete resolution. This offers the opportunity of a very accurate investigation into the constituents that are to a great extent responsible for beer quality.