Microbial dynamics and metabolite changes in Chinese Rice Wine fermentation from sorghum with different tannin content

Jialiang Xu,Huijun Wu,Zhenpeng Li,Zhiwei Wang,Qing Ren,Xin Lu,Fuping Zheng

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-23013-1

Abstract

Chinese rice wine (CRW) is the oldest kind of wine in China and is mainly fermented by wheat Qu and yeast with rice, millet, etc. This gives CRW a unique quality, but the flavor components are complex. Its formation is related to microorganisms, but the link between CRW and microorganisms is poorly understood. Here, we used two kinds of sorghum (JZ22 and JB3, of which JZ22 has a higher tannin content) as the raw materials to brew and determined the structural and functional dynamics of the microbiota by metagenomics and flavor analyses. We detected 106 (JZ22) and 109 (JB3) volatile flavor compounds and 8 organic acids. By correlation analysis, we established 687 (JZ22) and 496 (JB3) correlations between the major flavor compounds and microbes. In JZ22, Blautia, Collinsella, Bifidobacterium, Faecalibacterium and Prevotella had the most correlations with flavor production. In JB3, the top 5 genera were Stenotrophomonas, Bdellovibrio, Solibacillus, Sulfuritalea and Achromobacter. In addition, more esters were detected, and more microorganisms correlated with ester generation in JZ22. This study provides a new idea for the micro ecological diversity of CRW fermented with sorghum. This is of significance for improving the quality and broadening the CRW varieties.

Highlights

Chinese rice wine (CRW), a traditional alcohol drink, is fermented from rice with wheat Qu and yeast
There are some reports about volatile compounds of Chinese rice wine, and most of them have used headspace solid-phase microextraction followed by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry[18]
The two kinds of sorghum used in this experiment were fermented using the same conditions, and the Wheat Qu used the same conditions as well, but the content of the flavor compounds was different

Summary

Introduction

Chinese rice wine (CRW), a traditional alcohol drink, is fermented from rice with wheat Qu and yeast. Compared with rice as a raw material, more phenylethanol was produced when sorghum and maize were used. The bacterial community structures and diversity of the Chinese rice wine varied significantly during different fermentation stages. We aim to study the effects of brewing raw materials and microorganisms on flavor compounds in Chinese rice wine. To achieve this goal, this study monitored bacterial succession by high-throughput sequencing and the volatile compound dynamics by HS-SPME/GC–MS during the brewing process. We would like to research the effect of tannin content on the microbial communities and flavor compounds in the brewing of yellow rice wine.

Objectives

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Results

Conclusion