Blueberry and honey vinegar: successive batch production, antioxidant potential and antimicrobial ability

Gourmet vinegars are versatile culinary ingredients that have aroused the interest of consumers not only for their unusual taste, but also for their health benefits. In this work, blueberry and honey wine was first obtained using a bench-scale bioreactor. This wine had high concentrations of phenolic compounds (706.18 mg GAE/mL) and appreciable free radical scavenging ability against DPPH (161.42 µmol trolox equivalent/100 mL) and ABTS•+ (356.41 µmol trolox equivalent/100 mL), as well as ferric-ion reducing antioxidant capacity (1419.86 µmol FeSO4/100 mL). In sequence, vinegar was produced from the wine in wooden barrels using successive acetification cycles. The average acetic acid concentration found in the vinegars was 4.4 g/100 mL, and the average acetic acid yield and volumetric productivity were 52.69% and 0.38 g/(L.h), respectively. Appreciable polyphenolic compounds (681.87 to 847.98 µg GAE/mL) and anthocyanin (12.8 to 15.39 mg/L) contents were found and high antioxidant activity. In addition, the vinegars demonstrated antimicrobial ability against Bacillus subtilis and Salmonella enterica Typhimurium.