is destined for the Canadian market where
Hiram Walker is a dominant force; the
rest is exported, predominantly to the U.S.,
Europe, and Australia.
To fulfill the requirements for export-ing
its products, Hiram Walker uses Anton
Paar density meters to measure the alco-hol
strength according to the standards of
the Association of Analytical Communities
International or Excise Canada, as required.
The DMA M density meters have approval
and certification from Excise Canada and
therefore meet all requirements for the mea-surement
of alcohol strength for Canadian
taxation purposes.
“The technicians from Anton Paar
Canada came and set up the density meters
to use the alcohol tables required by Excise
Canada. The accuracy of the measurement
on DMA 5000 M is high enough to meet the
stipulations and we’ve had no problems in
this area, neither with the measurements or
the approval of the instruments,” said Paik.
Two options for liqueurs
Besides measuring the alcohol strength
of aged and neutral grain spirits, Hiram
Walker also needs to check the alcohol con-tent
on its portfolio of liqueurs. To meet the
excise regulations, liqueurs must be distilled
before using the DMA 5000 M density meter
to determine the true alcohol strength of
the products. However, Hiram Walker has
recently invested in Anton Paar’s Alcolyzer
Spirits setup for “in-process” sample testing
throughout the liqueur blending process, as
well as for blend verification after transfer-ring
product to the bottling lines.
On the decision to invest in Alcolyzer
devices, Paik said, “Alcohol determination
by distillation takes about one hour to get
a result. We used to measure our in-process
liqueurs using NIR technology which takes a
couple of minutes, but we wanted to reduce
errors in measurements caused by poor
sample vial preparation and temperature
variation, and get away from all the waste.
With the Alcolyzer setup, the system simply
draws the sample through by peristaltic
pump, and then the system can be flushed
out with water after the measurement
is complete.”
Three modules comprise the Alcolyzer
setup: the DMA 5000 M density meter work-ing
with an NIR-based alcohol meter and
a polarimeter. The polarimeter measures
the saccharose and invert sugar content of
the liqueur and automatically corrects its
influence on the alcohol results according-ly.
For the alcohol determination without
extra distillation, the Alcolyzer setup deliv-ers
quick results as no sample preparation
is required.
“It’s done in less than five minutes,”
Paik said. “For measurements after distil-lation,
we can simply switch the Alcolyzer
setup to just the density meter and measure
the alcohol strength on that.”
With the Alcolyzer configuration there’s
another reason the quality team saves time
when measuring spirits during the produc-tion
process. As Paik said, “A lot of the time
when we make new products we’d like to
know in-process roughly where we are for
the distillations and the Alcolyzer has prov-en
to be much more reliable on unknown
samples than our previous NIR device,
which often required us to build a model
with several data points before it could give a
reasonable result.”
Looking at the well-equipped distill-ery,
blending and bottling laboratories, it’s
clear just how much technology supports
the production of Hiram Walker’s spirits.
The Anton Paar instruments are among a
number of devices used every day to give
insight into the production process and
deliver values which are important for qual-ity
control and taxation purposes. Both the
DMA 5000 M and Alcolyzer Spirits devices
are appreciated for their ease of use and
compliance with regulations. Both make a
small, but significant contribution to the
successful production of Hiram Walker’s
high-quality spirits.
Photos Courtesy of Valerie Provost
“The technicians from Anton Paar
Canada came and set up the density
meters to use the alcohol tables
required by Excise Canada.”
– Jayna Paik, Ph.D.
QA/QC
44 § POURED CANADA § www.poured.ca
/www.poured.ca
