An ethylene glycol (EG)/polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) copolymer based stir bar sorptive extraction (SBSE)-GC–MS method was developed for the analysis of volatile phenols (4-ethylphenol, 4-vinylphenol, 4-ethylguaiacol, and 4-vinylguaiacol) in alcoholic beverages. The beverage samples were diluted with phosphate buffer (1M, pH 7) and extracted with an EG/PDMS stir bar. Volatile phenols were thermally desorbed and analyzed by GC–MS. Parameters affecting extraction efficiency were studied including ionic strength, pH, extraction time, ethanol content and nonvolatile matrix. Good correlation coefficients with R2 in the range of 0.994–0.999 were obtained for volatile phenol concentration of 5–500μg/L. Recovery for all phenols were from 95.7% to 104.4% in a beer matrix and 81.4% to 97.6% in a wine matrix. The method had a standard deviation less than 5.8% for all volatile phenols. The limit of quantification (LOQs) in beer samples was lower than 3μg/L. The method was further applied to analyze the concentrations of volatile phenols in beer, wine and other alcoholic beverage samples.