Shochu brewing tests using wine and sake yeasts and a comparison of the volatile compounds

Abstract

In small-scale rice-shochu making tests, wine yeast and sake yeast were studied to determine the ability for fermentation and the volatile composition. Fourteen strains of tested yeast strains showed low fermentation ability. When a correlation between volatile compounds was evaluated, the correlation coefficients of 19 data pairs was more than absolute value > 0.6. Eighteen strains were selected on the basis of their volatile composition characteristics. To confirm the the volatile composition of schochu brewed by these strains, they were re-tested to produce rice shochu on a small scale. In each yeast strain, the overall tendency of their volatile composition was not changed. From these results, 18 selected strains were deemed useful for making shochu by their volatile composition characteristics.