Anais do Simpósio Latino Americano de Ciências de Alimentos
Anais do 14 SLACA - Simpósio Latino Americano de Ciência de Alimentos

Mead is a beverage made from the alcoholic fermentation of honey wort supplemented, or not, with fruits, spices, among others, and can be marketed in Brazil with alcoholic graduation ranging from 4 to 14% v.v-1. The addition of clarifiers to alcoholic beverages is important to eliminate insoluble particles, responsible for the turbidity of them, and this process can be physical, by filtration or centrifugation, or by the addition of organic or mineral "glues". The present work aims to evaluate the clarifying effect of bentonite, activated carbon and carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) on mead prepared from the alcoholic fermentation of honey wort supplemented with soursop and cowpea extract. For the clarification of mead (14.0% v.v-1 ethanol, and transmittance at 660 nm equal to 85.7 ± 0.0%), they were tested as clarifiers, bentonite, activated carbon and carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) at concentrations equal to 0.5, 1.0 and 1.5 g.L-1. The clarification process was conducted for 360 h, under refrigeration (4 °C), with sample collections every 72 h for the evaluation of color intensity (I), tint (T), percentage of yellow color (%Yellow) and transmittance at 660 nm, the latter being inversely proportional to the turbidity of the sample. The highest percentage of transmittance increase at 660 nm (10.6 ± 0.5%) occurred in mead with 0.5 g.L-1 of CMC, after 288 h of fermentation, and the other concentrations of CMC also provided a more intense clarifying effect than those reported for the mead clarified with bentonite and activated carbon. Thus, CMC was the most efficient agent in clarifying soursop mead and cowpea extract, and can be used to clarify several beverages due to good availability and low acquisition cost.