Production and Comparative Physicochemical Analysis of Vinegar from Locally Grown Fruits in Nigeria and Industrial Produced Vinegar

Vinegar is the product made from the conversion of ethyl alcohol to acetic acid by a genus of bacteria, Acetobacter. The major aim of the work is to produce a vinegar with locally made fruits and compare it with the industrial produced vinegar to ascertain if it can be used to substitute the industrial produced vinegar and to also determine if there are presence of acetic acid bacteria present in the vinegar which can be used as inoculants for future fermentation the sensory attributes were also analysed to determine the consumer acceptability of the vinegar produced. This work involves production of vinegar from locally produced fruits in Nigeria by homemade scale process and then analyzing the vinegar to determine the physicochemical components of the vinegar as well as identifying the acetic acid bacteria present in the vinegar and its sensory attributes. The vinegar produced was analysed for its pH, relative density and titrable acidity and from the result, there was no significant difference in the pH and relative density of the vinegars. The titrable acidity of the industrial produced vinegar is higher than the locally produced vinegars analysed. The microbial isolation of the vinegar for safety assessment gave no growths in the media used for the analysis which means that there are no pathogenic organisms like mould or coliform which can cause diseases to the consumers. The major organism isolated was the Acetobacter spp. although the culture independent methods should be carried out to determine other non culturable organisms present in the vinegar. The sensory evaluation shows that the locally produced was well accepted from the scores on the result presented. Generally, the result of this work shows that indeed vinegar of good quality can be produced locally using locally grown fruits but optimization of the process should be carried out to improve yield.