The Effect Of Different Pineapple Ripeness On The Physicochemical, Microbiological Properties Of Fermented Kefir Drink

MD2 pineapple consists of 6 indices of ripeness according to Malaysian Standards (2018) but only two ripeness stage was used in this experiment which were Index 2 that represented unripe while Index 4 represents ripe stage. It was found that pineapple can make a good substrate for the making of non-dairy probiotic drink such as kefir drink by fermenting MD2 pineapple juice together with water kefir grains. However, different ripeness of pineapple could yield different properties of the fermented kefir drink, therefore unripe stage (Index 2) and ripe stage (Index 4) were selected to evaluate and to study the effect of different ripeness of the MD2 pineapple on the physicochemical and microbiological properties of the fermented kefir drink in this experiment so that an alternative non-dairy probiotic drink can be produced to replace dairy probiotic drink for vegetarians and lactose intolerance consumers. The pineapple kefir was made by adding 5 g of kefir (5%) and 100 ml of the pineapple juice. Then, the fermentation was conducted at a temperature of 25 ºC for 24 hours