Acidification of fig wine

Abstract

The acidification of fig wine refers to the process of adjusting the acidity levels in the wine to improve its quality, flavor, and stability. In this study the acidification of fig wine was done by, addition of different acids which include; tartaric, acetic and citric acid and the main objective was to determine the required acid adjustment fractions for fig wine to meet quality standards. Fig wine was produced by fermentation process using saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast. The initial physiochemical properties of fig wine were determined which include, alcohol content, total sugars, titratable acidity, pH and total soluble solids. In this study, response surface methodology (RSM) was employed to determine the optimum combination of the added acids for acidification of fig wine. The responses which include pH and sensory acceptance values of the fig wine were obtained and analyzed. The analyses show that varying acid combinations have a pH of 3.08 to 3.46 and sensory acceptance values of 5.2 to 6.7 at constant temperature and time during the optimization process. From the analysis of variance, the R2 of the response variables is more than 0.77 that indicates that a high proportion of variability was explained the model. The best acid combination for acidification of fig wine was selected by the response surface methodology because it had the highest sensory acceptance value and the required pH within the UNBS standards which is tartaric acid (9.08g/L), citric acid (10g/L) and acetic acid (2g/L) and hence the fig wine was acidified and improved to the required standards.