Product of banana: vinegar

Bananas are wide spread fruit in Africa and are usually consumed raw. With the development of banana export industry large quantity of fruits are expected to be surplus, because of high standards imposed on appearance of fruit.

As bananas have a short shelf-life, there is a rapid rate of deterioration of this fruit.

Fermenting banana juice is therefore considered to be an attractive way of utilizing wasted and over-ripe bananas to produce derived products with economy benefits. The main fermented products of these fruits are beer, wine and vinegar.

The first step in the production of bananas vinegar is to wash, peel, and slice the fruits. Slices are blended and boiled with water and then filtered. This method produced a clear juice that was seeded with a strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae to initiate fermentation and produce alcohol and carbon dioxide.

This followed by the aerobic production of acetic acid and water from the alcohol by Acetobacter aceti and Acetobacter rancens.

The alcoholic fermentation normally takes about a week while the acetification stage takes 1-2 months. A good quality alcoholic base for producing vinegar containing 5-6% acetic acid was obtained.
Product of banana: vinegar