The selection of Saccharomyces yeast which is able to produce high amounts of relevant aroma components from sorghum wort has been scarcely explored. Furthermore, generating sorghum beer with low levels of vicinal diketones (VDKs) is a permanent concern of brewers because of the wort's low amino acid content. To address these challenges, a performant Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast was selected based on the higher alcohols and esters it synthesizes, and conditions influencing the young beer's VDK content were studied. Our results confirm that the low amino acid content limits aromagenesis by industrial ale yeast. By contrast, the selected yeast is able to efficiently produce higher alcohols and esters and is well adapted to tropical temperatures (27 °C). The young beer obtained from 13 °P sorghum wort using the isolated strain is characterized by a higher amount of aroma-active components such as isoamyl alcohol (116.25 ± 0.38 mg/L), isoamyl acetate (1.81 ± 0.02 mg/L) and ethyl acetate (22.07 ± 0.74 mg/L). The VDK content, however, is not only yeast strain dependent; it is strongly reduced by high fermentation temperature (27 °C) and increased wort gravity.
Keywords: Esters; Higher alcohols; Saccharomyces; Vicinal diketones; aromagenesis.
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