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Fusel Oil

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fusel oil

[′fyü·zəl ‚ȯil]
(materials)
A volatile, poisonous mixture of isoamyl, butyl, propyl, and heptyl alcohols produced as by-products in alcoholic fermentation of starches, grains, or fruits to produce ethyl alcohol.
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific & Technical Terms, 6E, Copyright © 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Fusel Oil

 

a by-product of ethyl alcohol fermentation. Ethyl alcohol may yield 0.4–0.6 percent fusel oil, with a density of 0.83–0.84 g/cm3 at 20°C. The fusel oil is in the form of a light yellow to dark reddish brown oily liquid with an unpleasant odor that irritates the mucous membranes of the respiratory tract. In chemical composition fusel oil is a mixture of monohydric aliphatic alcohols, including isopentyl and isobutyl alcohols, with impurities of acids, aldehydes, and other compounds. Fusel oil is poisonous.

The mixture of amyl alcohols obtained from fusel oil is used in the production of amyl acetate, and the mixture of hexyl, heptyl, octyl, and nonyl alcohols is used in the preparation of fragrances.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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References in periodicals archive
Esterification Reaction of Oleic Acid With a Fusel Oil Fraction for Production of Lubricating Oil.
Esterification of fusel oil using reactive distillation--Part I: Reaction kinetics.
Lipase Mediated Production of Flavor and Fragrance Esters from Fusel Oil. Journal Food Science 54, 1565-1568.
Capillary GC with a flame ionization detector has proven to be very effective in separating fusel oils and the resulting chromatograms show excellent separation of the individual components in a variety of whiskeys (Kahn et al.
These columns using supports such as carbon graphite (Carbopack B) as the adsorbent and Carbowax (Carbowax 20M) as the single liquid phase have been very useful for determining fusel oils (Martin et al.
This explanation for why yeast makes fusel oil is still widely held.
They followed the disappearance of branched-chain amino acids and the formation of fusel oil (difficult and time-consuming measurements to make in those days) during the fermentation of a French Colombard must by the Montrachet strain of yeast.
Castor and Guymon's results shattered Ehrlich's implied one-to-one link between amino acid utilization and fusel oil formation.
In a series of papers, we showed that the major fusel oil components are synthesized along the same metabolic route as their corresponding amino acids.
(Jim Guymon, professor of enology, brandy specialist and connoisseur, had a remarkable nose for fusel oil. I saw him--by tasting--correctly rank three Zinfandel wines according to their content of fusel oil.)
In these same studies we discovered the metabolic route of formation of normal propyl alcohol, the fusel oil component that does not correspond directly to any amino acid.
Although testing for residual fusel oils was beyond our technological abilities, my friend accidentally did it the hard way.
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