Mead production: comparison of different production scales (preliminary results)
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abstract
Mead production represents a possible economic alternative to honey producers that intend to obtain honey products with surplus value. From that the present work aims to study the influence of using different production scales on the quality of the final mead obtained and on the process performance. Increasing the production scale almost ten times (1.5 to 20 L), some differences were observed. Maximum specific growth rates equal to 0.045 and 0.038 h-1 were obtained for fermentations carried out at 1.5 and 20 L, respectively. The time course of glucose and glycerol were similar for both production scales. Nevertheless, slight differences at the end of the fermentations were observed for fructose and acetic acid. In relation to ethanol, a higher final concentration was found in the pilot-scale, resulting in a higher ethanol yield. In conclusion, these preliminary results are a good promise to local honey producers who intent to obtain large-productions of mead.
