PRODUCTION AND SENSORY EVALUATION OF NON ALCOHOLIC RICE WINE USING Saccharomyces cerevisiae

This study produced non-alcoholic rice wine from typical alcoholic wine fermented for 60days with Saccharomyces cerevisiae (starter culture) and dealcoholized by distillation (~80°C) for 5 hours. A weigh of 500 g of parboiled white rice, 200 mL starter culture (standardized at ~106 cfu/ml) and 500 mL of water was added into 2000 mL flask bottle, and periodically degassed after agitating every 48 hrs. Yeast-bacteria ratio, a recent parameter in wine quality assessment was 19:31, this indicated a normal trend in winery processes. Non-saccharomyces were >80% against <20% Saccharomyces species after 60 days fermentation. Among the sensory qualities (aroma, taste, appearance and consistency) of alcoholic rice wines (ARW) and dealcoholized rice wine (DRW), only consistency (ARW and DRW) and taste (ARW) were strongly noticed by panelists beyond the acceptance threshold. Dealcoholization significantly (P<0.05) enhanced the panelist's rating of aroma and taste qualities, but appearance and consistency qualities of ARW and DRW were not significantly (P>0.05) altered. Dealcoholization process significantly reduced more than 95% of alcoholic content, titratable acidity and apparent attenuation. However, total calories and pH were enhanced by 5% and 38.5%, respectively. Overall panelists' responses suggest that DRW was better than ARW. Conclusively, Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a relative stable starter culture for rice wine production within 60 days fermentation period to achieve average alcoholic content of 9.86%. Dealcoholization by distillation is a simple and cost effective approach to achieve relative acceptable non-alcoholic rice wine.