One soft and two "gourmet" Arabica coffee samples from Brazilian "cerrado" were submitted to three kinds of roasting: american (light brown beans), medium (brown beans), and hard (black beans). The GC/MS analysis showed that the major volatile components (concentration > 1%) are pyridine, pyrazine and derivatives, furfural and derivatives. This technique showed that it is not possible to distinguish the three coffee samples by the dominant volatiles. The results showed also that the roasting grade sensibly affects the volatiles composition, furnishing the american roasting a volatile composition quite different from those obtained by medium and hard roasting.
coffee; "gourmet" coffee; roasting; coffee volatiles
