Bazán Tantaleán, D.L.; Del-Río, P.G.; Cortés Diéguez, S.; Domínguez, J.M.; Pérez Guerra, N. Main Composition and Visual Appearance of Milk Kefir Beverages Obtained from Four Consecutive 24- and 48-h Batch Subcultures. Processes2024, 12, 1419.
Bazán Tantaleán, D.L.; Del-Río, P.G.; Cortés Diéguez, S.; Domínguez, J.M.; Pérez Guerra, N. Main Composition and Visual Appearance of Milk Kefir Beverages Obtained from Four Consecutive 24- and 48-h Batch Subcultures. Processes 2024, 12, 1419.
Bazán Tantaleán, D.L.; Del-Río, P.G.; Cortés Diéguez, S.; Domínguez, J.M.; Pérez Guerra, N. Main Composition and Visual Appearance of Milk Kefir Beverages Obtained from Four Consecutive 24- and 48-h Batch Subcultures. Processes2024, 12, 1419.
Bazán Tantaleán, D.L.; Del-Río, P.G.; Cortés Diéguez, S.; Domínguez, J.M.; Pérez Guerra, N. Main Composition and Visual Appearance of Milk Kefir Beverages Obtained from Four Consecutive 24- and 48-h Batch Subcultures. Processes 2024, 12, 1419.
Abstract
Nowadays, there has been a significant rise in the consumption of kefir, a functional beverage touted for its perceived health benefits. To offer a high-quality beverage to consumers, it is imper-ative to scrutinize and fine-tune the fermentation process. This study seeks to investigate the im-pact of fermentation time and the number of subcultures on the physicochemical, microbiological, and volatile composition, as well as the visual appearance of kefir beverages obtained from four consecutive 24- or 48-h batch subcultures. All fermented beverages exhibited low lactose, ethanol and acids levels, with counts of viable probiotic lactic acid bacteria and yeast exceeding 106 colony forming units/mL. The four kefir beverages from the 48-h batch subcultures notably showed the lowest total concentrations of volatile compounds likely due to overfermentation and overacidifi-cation of the beverages. This caused separation of the whey and curd, along with the formation of large gas bubbles, negatively affecting the visual appearance of the products. These findings em-phasize the importance of fine-tuning the fermentation process to ensure the production of high-quality kefir beverages that align with consumer preferences. The four beverages from the 24-h batch subcultures exhibited high microbiological and physicochemical stability during stor-age at 4 °C for 28 days.
Biology and Life Sciences, Food Science and Technology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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