Abstract

Mead or honey wine is an alcoholic beverage made from honey. The main objective of this work was to evaluate the capacity of Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains, isolated from honey to produce mead. Nine wine yeasts were screened for ethanol, osmotic and sulphur dioxide tolerance. Seven strains from Indian rock bee honey, were evaluated in terms of their fermentation performance under ethanol, osmotic and sulphur dioxide stress. YR5 (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) strain from rock bee honey showed measurable growth in medium containing 10% (v/v) ethanol. They were equally sugar and SO2 tolerant having good growth in medium containing 20% (w/v) glucose plus 20% (w/v) fructose and 250 mg/l SO2. Based on the above results it can be concluded that a high sugar, SO2 and ethanol tolerant Saccharomyces cerevisiae YR5 could be used as starter culture for commercial production of mead.

Keywords: mead, yeast, ethanol, sugar, SO2