Identification of acrylamide in coffee beans by secondary ion mass spectrometry

Coffee, one of the most consumed beverages, is prepared from ground coffee beans. The seeds come from the Coffee tree and undergo many processes such as harvesting, drying, roasting, etc. In this work, we focused on the process of roasting because during this process there are many physical and chemical changes and occurs to the Maillard reaction. The resulting products of this reaction are brown colour of beans, coffee aroma and toxic acrylamide. Motivation of this work is to identify acrylamide in coffee beans, which are different in the degree of roasting and the method of their processing. Using the technique of surface analysis Secondary ions mass spectrometry, we recorded the spectra of roasted beans from the Slovak roaster Goriffee and dry fragments of instant coffee of a commercial brand. We confirmed that the roasting process significantly affects the amount of acrylamide in coffee beans. As the beans roast longer and more slowly, the amount of acrylamide decreases. In contrast, peaks of acrylamide were clearly visible in the spectra of fast-roasted instant coffee. (authors)