THE AVAILABILITY OF A LACTOSE MEDIUM FOR TEA FUNGUS CULTURE AND KOMBUCHA FERMENTATION

Kombucha is a traditional beverage that is prepared by fermenting sucrose-sweetened black tea. A medium is inoculated with a cellulose pellicle (popularly known as a tea fungus) or fermentation brought from previous cultivation process. Our aim was to test the possibility of obtaining a Kombucha beverage using different concentration of lactose as an alternative source of C-atoms. A traditional medium sweetened with sucrose or without sugar was used as control. Without lactose-fermenting yeast strains in tea fungus, lactose is not an adequate alternative source of the C-atom for Kombucha fermentation because it is not possible to obtain Kombucha with an appropriate acidity during a seven-day fermentation. Compared with the traditional medium, fermentation is significantly slower with high differences in acid content. In unsweetened tea inoculated with the beverage obtained from a previous traditional process, Kombucha fermentation processes and produces a beverage without sugar and alcohol.