Brewing characteristics of piezosensitive sake yeasts

ABSTRACT

Application of high hydrostatic pressure (HHP) treatment to food processing is expected as a non-thermal fermentation regulation technology that supresses over fermentation. However, the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae used for Japanese rice wine (sake) brewing shows high tolerance to HHP. Therefore, we aimed to generate pressure-sensitive (piezosensitive) sake yeast strains by mating sake with piezosensitive yeast strains to establish an HHP fermentation regulation technology and extend the shelf life of fermented foods. The results of phenotypic analyses showed that the generated yeast strains were piezosensitive and exhibited similar fermentation ability compared with the original sake yeast strain. In addition, primary properties of sake brewed using these strains, such as ethanol concentration, sake meter value and sake flavor compounds, were almost equivalent to those obtained using the sake yeast strain. These results suggest that the piezosensitive strains exhibit brewing characteristics essentially equivalent to those of the sake yeast strain.

KEYWORDS:

• Sake yeasts
• piezosensitivity
• pressure-regulated fermentation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Uchida Energy Science Promotion Foundation; and the NARO Bio-oriented Technology Research Advancement Institution (the special scheme project on regional developing strategy).