Yeasts on a Sugar High: How different types of sugar and yeast mixtures affect CO₂ production.

Abstract

Fermentation and CO₂ production are two factors that play a major role in baked goods and alcoholic beverage production. We questioned if manipulating the types of sugars and strains of yeasts would increase the levels of CO₂ production, thus leading to more efficient fermentation and successful production of baked goods and alcohol. We compared the levels of CO₂ production in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, also known as Baker’s Yeast, and Rice Wine yeast when sugars such as glucose and sucrose were added, which resulted in four separate treatments that tested each sugar in each strain of yeast and compared their levels of CO₂ production. Our results showed that S. cerevisiae and glucose produced the highest levels of CO₂, which was to be expected, since glucose, a monosaccharide, is a simpler sugar to break down, and S. cerevisiae is the yeast strain of choice for ACME Brewery and Baking Company.