Aguardente de caju (Anacardium occidentale L.): produção e análise sensorial

Abstract

The cashew apple (Anacardium occidentale L.) is a crop of great interest to the Northeast region of Brazil, which receives many tax and financial incentives. The main interest of entrepreneurs comes down to the nuts, but there are several industrial opportunities for cashew apple which are not properly harnessed. About 15 % of the pseudofruit production is for consumption "in nature" or for manufacturing sweets, juices and “cajuínas”. This leads to a high loss and waste of cashew apple pseudofruit. Besides these alternatives employed to try to reduce this waste, there is the possibility of using cashew juice as a rich fermentable sugars médium, and thus generating a cashew apple fermented, or after distillation a cashew’s brandy. Alcoholic beverages are normally produced by fermentative action of Saccharomyces yeasts which in anaerobic conditions perform the alcoholic fermentation, transforming the sugar available in ethanol and CO2. This study aimed to produce four brandys from whole cashew apple juice and from the clarified cashew apple juice, under the action of two different yeasts and evaluate the overall acceptance of these drinks. The treatments were performed: whole cashew apple juice with Fleischmann yeast (T3); whole cashew apple juice with Blastosel yeast (T4); clarified cashew apple juice with Fleischmann yeast (T1) and clarified cashew apple juice with Blastosel yeast (T2). Reducing sugars and biomass were determined in time intervals of 3 hours, to construct a kinetic curve for establishing the optimum conditions to be directed to the instrumented reactor. The configurations were established 20 °C, 50 rpm, 0,014 g/L of yeast and 18 hours of fermentation. The fermenteds were distilled to produce the beverages. Four alcoholic spirits were obtained and got an alcohol content around 47 - 49 °GL. In the sensorial analysis of the drinks, all obtained results within of the acceptable range with results ranging from good to great. The highlighted treatment was the clarified cashew apple juice submitted to baker's yeast (T1), which obtained the best kinetic behavior for biomass and was the spirit with the highest percentage of acceptance for all attributes, taste, scent, color, overall acceptance and burning, presenting as a product of interest to the consumer market.