Quantitative Analysis of the Alcohol Content of Various Beers in the Philippines

The catabolic degradation of ethanol is essential to life. If the body had no mechanism for catabolizing alcohols, these chemicals would build up in the body up to levels that would make it harmful and will eventually lead to the development of diseases.It is then important to quantify the ethanol content of specific alcoholic drinks in order to determine the amount that a person can consume in order to fall within the range of the recommended alcohol limit. The ten most popular brands of beer in the Philippines were chosen in this study. The beer samples were diluted in a ratio of 1:20 with distilled water. Three single-blinded trials were conducted for each beverage, after which titra- tion procedures were employed. Results showed that the ethanolic amount of the alcoholic beverage samples did not have large differences from their respective label claims, however the t-test showed that only four of the beer samples tested in the experiment complied with the label claims. Since the label claim corresponds to the amount of ethanol content specific for each beverage, the results of this experiment can be considered as guide in assessing whether a person’s alcoholic consumption falls within the range of the recommended alcohol limit or not