Industrial-level brewing using oenological Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe as mixed-inoculum

The development of new food processes and formulations begins at the laboratory stage,progresses through pilot plant trials, and culminates in industrial production. Altough the positive effects in terms of sensory characteristics and qualitative differentiation have been widely studied at laboratory level , fermentations conducted at the industrial level by oenolog-ical Saccharomyces cerevisiae and non-Saccharomyces strains have not been thoroughly investigat-ed. Scaling up to the industrial level is a critical process that involves more than simply increas-ing the dimensions of the process itself.. The purpose of our research was to compare laboratory and industrial-level brewing of a novel craft beer produced with the addition of common un-malted wheat and fermented by Schizosaccharomyces pombe and S. cerevisiae strains. Fermentation was carried out using a S. cerevisiae strain either of oenological origin alone or through sequen-tial inoculations with S. pombe.. Beers produced with the mixed starter showed greater repro-ducibility between the two production levels than those fermented by S. cerevisiae alone. Ac-cording to the results, the main differences highlighted between laboratory and industrial level trials with S. cerevisiae alone concerned the extent of starch degradation, fermentation efficiency, and alcohol production, which were higher in brewing at laboratory level. In contrast, beers produced at industrial level using sequential inoculation received significantly higher scores for foam quantity and persistence, as well as overall olfactory intensity, while scoring significantly lower scores for saltiness and sourness. To our knowledge, this research is the first to explore the use of Sc. pombe for industrial beer production.