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. 2022 Aug 4;12(1):13431.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-17594-1.

Development of mixed starter culture for the fermentation of Ethiopian honey wine, Tej

Eskindir Getachew Fentie  1   2 , Minsoo Jeong  3 , Shimelis Admassu Emire  2 , Hundessa Dessalegn Demsash  2 , Min-Chul Kim  3 , Kyeongmo Lim  3 , Jae-Ho Shin  4
Affiliations

Development of mixed starter culture for the fermentation of Ethiopian honey wine, Tej

Eskindir Getachew Fentie et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Ethiopian honey wine is one of the country's most popular spontaneously fermented traditional alcoholic beverages. However, the final product of this natural fermentation system is frequently of poor and inconsistent quality. Furthermore, it makes the process difficult to predict, control, and correct. Thus, the main aim of this study was to develop a direct fermentation system for Ethiopian honey wine, Tej. After isolating fermentative microbial strains from Tej samples, they were subjected to intensive screening to fit to its purpose. Later, phenotypic and genotypic characterization, and inoculation of isolates to honey-must were performed sequentially. Finally, microbial interaction and physicochemical analysis, including volatile compounds profiling, were done for the inoculated samples. The identified isolates were strains of Saccharomycetaceae and Lactobacillaceae families. These strains showed a good ability to tolerate osmotic stress and a lower pH environment. Tej sample produced by mixed culture inoculation of Saccharomyces and Lactobacillus species showed similar physicochemical, volatile compounds, and sensory attributes values with that of the control sample. Thus, a mixture of Saccharomyces and Lactobacillus strains could be used as a starter culture to produce Ethiopian honey, Tej, without scarifying of its major quality attributes.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Phylogenetic tree of (a) Lactobacillaceae and Saccharomycetaceae isolate family members together with related species based on 16SrRNA and ITS gene sequencing data (b) Simple sequence repeats (SSR) data for 12 isolates of Lactobacillaceae and Saccharomycetaceae
Figure 2
Figure 2
Heat map of the phenotypic microarray results for Saccharomycetaceae and Lactobacillaceae isolates using different (a) Nutrient supplements (b) Osmolytes (c) pH microplates. The magnitude of microbial metabolism is illustrated by a different heatmap color. The larger magnitude is indicated by dark red, while the magnitude gradually falls to light red, white, light blue, and finally dark blue, with the latter denoting a lesser magnitude.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Microbial growth curve of (a) total fermentative yeast for TS1, TS2, TS3 and TS4 (b) total fermentative yeast and Lactobacillus for sample TS5 (c) total fermentative yeast and Lactobacillus for sample TS6, (d) total fermentative yeast and Lactobacillus for sample TS7 and (e) total fermentative yeast and Lactobacillus for sample TS8 (f) total fermentative yeast and Lactobacillus for the control sample.
Figure 4
Figure 4
The volatile compound and sensory attributes of honey wine samples inoculated with various strain combinations (a) Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) plot of minor volatile compounds found in a small number of test samples (b) Principal coordinate analysis (PCoA) plot with Bray–Curtis dissimilarity for honey wine test samples based on volatile compound concentration (c) Radar plot for the sensory analysis results of the test samples using a seven-point hedonic scale.
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