Feasibility of Cheonghju Brewing with Wild Type Yeast Strains from Nuruks

In order to select the best strains to have the feasibility of Cheonghju brewing, 10 wild type yeast strains from 300 different types of Nuruk were investigated on their ethanol resistance, resistance to glucose and flocculation. The amounts of alcohol, organic acids, and volatile compounds, Brix, pH were also examined for the alcoholic beverages made with the 10 selected strains. Almost all strains showed alcohol production activities in the medium containing 18%(v/v) ethanol and 29%(w/v) glucose. The strains 90-2 showed a higher flocculation activity than other strains. Strains 54-3, 90-2 and 91-5 produced more alcohol than control strain (7.42%(w/w)) when fermented with wild type yeast strains. In addition, alcoholic beverages containing low acetic acid also showed low levels of total acidity. GC/MS analysis of the product showed 4 alcohols, 11 esters and 1 acid as volatile compounds. Selected strains were tentatively identified as Phichia sydowiorum (91-5), Zygosaccharomyces cidri (192-2 and 271-4), and as Saccharomyces cerevisiae (18-2, 54-3, 90-2, 91-2, 98-2, 99-5 and 272-7) by BIIOLOG method.