Influence of Freeze-Dried Yeast Starter Cultures on Volatile Compounds of Tchapalo, a Traditional Sorghum Beer from Côte d’Ivoire

Abstract

The production of the Ivorian sorghum beer known as tchapalo remains more or less an empirical process. The use of starter cultures was therefore suggested as the appropriate approach to alleviate the problems of variations in organoleptic quality and microbiological stability. In this study, we evaluated the capacity of S. cerevisiae and C. tropicalis to produce sorghum beer as freeze-dried starter in mixed or pure cultures. Beers produced with mixed freeze-dried cultures of S. cerevisiae F12-7 and C. tropicalis C0-7 showed residual sugars and ethanol contents similar to beers obtained with S. cerevisiae F12-7 pure culture, but the total sum of organic acids analyzed was the highest with the mixed culture (15.71 g/L). Higher alcohols were quantitatively the largest group of volatile compounds detected in beers. Among these compounds, 2-phenyl ethanol, a higher alcohol that plays an important role in beer flavor, was highly produced with the mixed culture (10,174.8 µg/L) than with the pure culture (8749.9 µg/L).

Keywords

• mixed starter
• Saccharomyces cerevisiae
• Candida tropicalis
• volatile compounds
• sorghum beer