Yeast Fermentation at Low Temperatures: Adaptation to Changing Environmental Conditions and Formation of Volatile Compounds

Abstract

Yeast plays a key role in the production of fermented foods and beverages, such as bread, wine, and other alcoholic beverages. They are able to produce and release from the fermentation environment large numbers of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). This is the reason for the great interest in the possibility of adapting these microorganisms to fermentation at reduced temperatures. By doing this, it would be possible to obtain better sensory profiles of the final products. It can reduce the addition of artificial flavors and enhancements to food products and influence other important factors of fermented food production. Here, we reviewed the genetic and physiological mechanisms by which yeasts adapt to low temperatures. Next, we discussed the importance of VOCs for the food industry, their biosynthesis, and the most common volatiles in fermented foods and described the beneficial impact of decreased temperature as a factor that contributes to improving the composition of the sensory profiles of fermented foods.

Preliminary Evaluation of the Use of Thermally-Dried Immobilized Kefir Cells in Low Alcohol Winemaking

“…However, the continuous improvement of fermentation kinetics as the repeated batches proceeded, indicated adaptation of the thermally-dried cells [25], an attribute that has also been noticed when other drying methods have been applied [40][41][42]. On the other hand, at 5 • C, ethanol yield values exhibited a substantial drop (although not significant in the case of immobilized cells), which may be attributed to a variety of causes like greater yeast susceptibility to ethanol toxicity in low temperatures [43], oxidative stress [44], changes to yeast metabolism due to cold stress [45,46], or even cell exhaustion after an increased number of repeated batches [47]. As a result, significantly lower sugar conversion values (p < 0.05) and significantly (p < 0.05) higher residual sugars were documented at 5 • C, in all cases.…”

Effect of Yeast Assimilable Nitrogen Content on Fermentation Kinetics, Wine Chemical Composition and Sensory Character in the Production of Assyrtiko Wines

“…No significant differences were observed regarding the conversion yield of ethanol between ferments of the same strain provided with different initial YAN. This outcome could indicate that the relatively low fermentation temperature and the yeast strain pose a more significant role compared to YAN [24,25].…”

Mesopic fermentation contributes more to the formation of important flavor compounds and increased growth of Lactobacillus casei Zhang than does high temperature during milk fermentation and storage

“…In recent years, fermented milk products have frequently served as carriers for probiotics, and it is now well established that these products can improve human health (Akdeniz and Akalın, 2019;Liszkowska and Berlowska, 2021). During fermentation processes conducted by probiotics, it is possible to obtain numerous bioactive compounds, such as peptides, AA, and short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) and thus, they could exert probiotic effects, such as improvement of intestinal health, prevention of various types of cancer, and promotion of the immune response (Li et al, 2017a;Hou et al, 2019;Liszkowska and Berlowska, 2021). However, the steps of technological processing, storage, and consumption of food all can affect probiotics viability, and therefore, their probiotic effects and sensory profiles of the final products are limited (Fiocco et al, 2020;Lesme et al, 2020;Sakandar and Zhang, 2021).…”