Division 4 Principle

Congeners in spirit drinks are determined by direct injection of the spirit drink, or appropriately diluted spirit drink, into a gas chromatography (GC) system. A suitable internal standard is added to the spirit drink prior to injection. The congeners are separated by temperature programming on a suitable column and are detected using a flame ionisation detector (FID). The concentration of each congener is determined with respect to the internal standard from response factors, which are obtained during calibration under the same chromatographic conditions as those of the spirit drink analysis.