The analysis of bitterness in beer and other hop products usually requires cumbersome sample preparation steps such as liquid/liquid extraction and solid phase extractions. Also present determination methods are often not selective and sensitive enough to give important results for the classification of hops. Recent advances made it possible to identify and quantify the major compounds and their isomers in beer and wort after sample preparation with C8 SPE cartridges [1]. However, there are still requirements for fast and selective sample preparations and determination techniques. A new sample preparation technique namely Stir Bar Sorptive Extraction (SBSE) [2] was evaluated for the enrichment of hop derived solutes in wort and beer. SBSE offers an effective, easy-handling and low-cost opportunity for the isolation of bitter components from aqueous matrices. A small stir bar, coated with an absorbance material is placed directly in the sample and stirred for 10 min. After sampling, the stir bar can be desorbed by a liquid followed by HPLC analysis. A further approach was the development of a new determinations technique for a new selective and sensitive detection technique for bitterness analysis in beer. The long fluorescence lifetimes of selected chelates, which are in the range of about 0.5 to 1 ms, can be used to determine the fluorescence intensities in a time resolved mode. This method allows a highly selective determination of the fluorescence with strongly reduced background. The novel method depends on the selective chelation to beta-carbonyl structures such as the iso-humulone group. A post column reagent was developed which provides optimized time-resolved detection. [1]Harms D. and Nitzsche F., J. Am. Soc. Brew. Chem. 59, No. 1, 2001. [2]Baltussen E., Sandra P., David F. and Cramers C., J. Microcol. Sep. 11, 1999.