The application of kombucha inoculum as an innovative starter culture in fresh cheese production

Recently, kombucha has been shown as an innovative non-conventional starter culture in dairy industry. In this research we investigated the possibility to produce new fresh cheese – kombucha fresh cheese, using kombucha inoculum as a non-conventional starter culture and compared it with the commercial starter culture XPL-1. Kombucha inoculum was successfully applied for kombucha fresh cheese production. Fermentation time was 12 h and 45 min, which is 8.93% shorter compared to the fresh cheese produced with XPL-1 starter culture (14 h), which reduces resources needed for production. Furthermore, we investigated antimicrobial activity of kombucha fresh cheese. Our results revealed its high antimicrobial activity on artificially contaminated samples, as total count of E. coli and L. monocytogenes decreased for 98.35% and 98.98%, respectively, during 30 days of storage. Antimicrobial activity is highly important for rather limited shelf life and could be correlated with antimicrobial effects of kombucha starter and high total phenols content observed in the kombucha sample (5.81 ± 0.28 mg GAE/g). Our results recommend kombucha inoculum for production of kombucha fresh cheese.