Avaliação da eficiência do uso de inóculo misto de leveduras para fermentação do caldo de cana e produção de cachaça

Abstract

Cachaça is a distilled beverage obtained from the fermentation of sugar cane produced exclusively in Brazil, with alcohol content between 38 and 48% v/v 20°C. The microbial of traditional fermentation processes is complex and consists of yeast and bacteria. The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of a mixed yeast inoculum, composed by Saccharomyces cerevisiae CA11 and Pichia caribbica CCMA 0198, in the fermentation of sugar cane juice for the cachaça production, use MALDI-TOF MS technique to characterize the inoculated yeast by the proteins profile and performing the characterization of the sensory profile and metabolites produced by GC-FID, GC-MS and HPLC. Based on the results of this study, it was concluded that co-inoculation of S. cerevisiae and P. caribbica influenced positively the final quality of cachaça. In the sensorial analysis, cachaça produced by fermentation with mixed inoculum showed better acceptance for the attributes appearance, aroma, flavor and general aspects. In addition, MALDI-TOF MS technique proved to be useful tool for monitoring the mixed yeast inoculum during the fermentation of sugar cane juice to produce cachaça.