Article

A non-yeast kefir-like fermented milk development with Lactobacillus acidophilus KCNU and Lactobacillus brevis Bmb6.

Bomee Lee1,, Cheng-Chung Yong2,, Hae-Chang Yi1, Saehun Kim3,*, Sejong Oh2,*
Author Information & Copyright
1Samik Dairy & Food Co. Ltd, Seoul 06202, Korea.
2Division of Animal Science, Chonnam National University, Gwangju 61186, Korea.
3College of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Korea University, Seoul 02481, Korea.
*Corresponding Author: Sae Hun Kim, College of Life Sciences and Biotechnology, Korea University, Seoul, Korea. E-mail: saehkim@korea.ac.kr.
*Corresponding Author: Sejong Oh, Division of Animal Science, Chonnam National University, Gwangju 61186, Korea. Tel: +82-62-530-2116. E-mail: soh@chonnam.ac.kr.

† These authors contributed equally to this work.

© Copyright 2020 Korean Society for Food Science of Animal Resources. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: Mar 03, 2020 ; Revised: Mar 27, 2020 ; Accepted: Apr 06, 2020

Published Online: Apr 07, 2020

Abstract

The use of yeast assist kefir fermentation, but also can cause food spoilage if uncontrolled. Hence, in this study, the microbial composition of an existing commercial kefir starter was modified to produce a functional starter, where Lactobacillus acidophilus KCNU and Lactobacillus brevis Bmb6 were used to replace yeast in the original starter to produce non-yeast kefir-like fermented milk. The functional starter containing L. acidophilus KCNU and L. brevis Bmb6 demonstrated excellent stability with 1010 CFU/g of total viable cells throughout the 12 weeks low-temperature storage. The newly developed functional starter also displayed a similar fermentation efficacy as the yeast-containing control starter, by completing the milk fermentation within 12 h, with a comparable total number of viable cells (108 CFU/mL) in the final products, as in control. Sensory evaluation revealed that the functional starter-fermented milk highly resembled the flavor of the control kefir, with enhanced sourness. Furthermore, oral administration of functional starter-fermented milk significantly improved the disease activity index score by preventing drastic weight-loss and further deterioration of disease symptoms in DSS-induced mice. Altogether, L. acidophilus KCNU and L. brevis Bmb6 have successfully replaced yeast in a commercial starter pack to produce a kefir-like fermented milk beverage with additional health benefits. The outcome of this study provides an insight that the specific role of yeast in the fermentation process could be replaced with suitable probiotic candidates.

Keywords: yeast; kefir; starter culture; fermentation; Lactobacillus