Application of Artificial Aging Techniques to Samples of Rum and Comparison with Traditionally Aged Rums by Analysis with Artificial Neural Nets

Abstract

Artificial aging techniques were applied to samples of rum. These samples were then compared, by artificial neural nets, with traditionally aged rums. Analysis was based on the phenolic and furanic composition of each sample. There were found to be few statistical differences between samples, thus confirming the possibility of applying artificial aging techniques to obtain rum with phenolic and furanic characteristics that are similar to those of rum obtained by traditional methods. Keywords: Rum; aging; artificial aging; phenolic composition; furanic composition; artificial neural nets; SOM; visualization by neural nets; Kohonen maps