Freshness indices of roasted coffee: monitoring the loss of freshness for single serve capsules and roasted whole beans in different packaging.

With the growing demand for high-quality coffee, it is becoming increasingly important to establish quantitative measures of the freshness of coffee, or the loss thereof, over time. Indeed, freshness has become a critical quality criterion in the specialty coffee scene, where the aim is to deliver the most pleasant flavor in the cup, from highest quality beans. A series of intensity ratios of selected volatile organic compounds (VOC) in the headspace of coffee (by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry) were revisited, with the aim to establish robust indicators of freshness of coffee - called freshness indices. Roasted whole beans in four different packaging materials and four commercial capsule systems from the Swiss market were investigated over a period of up to one year of storage time. These measurements revealed three types of insight. First, a clear link between barrier properties of the packaging material and the evolution of selected freshness indices was observed. Packaging materials that contain an aluminum layer offer better protection. Second, processing steps prior to packaging are reflected in the absolute values of freshness indices. Third, differences in the standard deviations of freshness-indices for single serve coffee capsule systems are indicative of differences in the consistency among systems, consistency being an important quality attribute of capsules.

Pharmaceutical feasibility of sub-visible particle analysis in parenterals with reduced volume light obscuration methods.

The draft for a new United States Pharmacopoeia (USP) monograph {787} "Sub-visible Particulate Matter in Therapeutic Protein Injections" describes the analysis of sub-visible particles by light obscuration at much lower sample volumes as so far required by the European Pharmacopoeia (Ph. Eur.) and the USP for parenterals in general. Our aim was to show the feasibility of minimizing the sample expenditure required for light obscuration similar to the new USP settings for standards and pharmaceutically relevant samples (both proteins and small molecules), without compromising the data quality. The light obscuration method was downscaled from >20 ml volume as so far specified in Ph. Eur./USP to 1 ml total sample volume. Comparable results for the particle concentration in all tested size classes were obtained with both methods for polystyrene standards, stressed BSA solutions, recombinant human IgG1 formulations, and pantoprazol i.v. solution. An additional advantage of the low volume method is the possibility to detect vial-to-vial variations, which are leveled out when pooling several vials to achieve sufficient volume for the Ph. Eur./USP method. This is in particular important for biotech products where not only the general quality aspect, but also aggregate formation of the drug substance is monitored by light obscuration.