Evaluation and selection of commercial yeast for the alcohol fermentation process of mead

Throughout history, alcoholic fermentation has been fundamental to the development of alcoholic beverages such as wine, beer and mead. Their physicochemical and sensory characteristics are different not only because of the raw materials origin but also because of the type of microorganism used to carry out the fermentation process. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is the yeast commonly used to produce alcoholic beverages. However, in case of mead, a product obtained from diluted honey and fermented, specific yeasts are not commercially available. Therefore, the aim of this work was to evaluate the alcoholic fermentation for obtaining mead using different commercially available yeasts. The fermentation process was carried out according to the standardized mead process methodology proposed in the literature (Quicazán, Cuenca, & Paz, 2018). According to the availability for acquisition, three different yeasts of the species (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) of the brands: A (Instant Success), B (Safcider), and C (Safoeno VR 44). were evaluated. Three objectives were established to select yeast: Brix degrees behavior over time, final ethanol concentration in percentage v/v and an affective sensory evaluation of the final product with 30 non-trained panelists to evaluate their preference. All fermentations were carried out in duplicate at 25°C for 408 hours using a must prepared from diluted honey, with 24°Brix. From B yeast it was obtained a beverage with 18% (v/v) ethanol and a general preference of 36,7%. However, the C yeast beverage containing 11,3 per cent (v/v) ethanol showed the highest preference among potential consumers. Therefore, considering not only ethanol content but also preference from potential consumers. Thus C yeast was selected in order to develop future studies to address the production of mead focused on the local Colombian consumer