Safety, Nutrition and Functionality of Traditional Fermented Beverages: Korefe, Borde and Booka in Southern Ethiopia

Ethiopia is one of the countries where a wide variety of traditional fermented beverages are produced and consumed for a long time. Traditional fermented beverages are indigenous & popular to a particular area and have been developed by the people using age-old techniques from locally available raw materials in southern parts of country. In this study, maize, barely, sorghum were used as ingredients respectively. Some of Ethiopian indigenous traditional fermented beverages products are borde, booka and korefe, in which fermentation is natural and involves mixed cultures of microbes. The most common fermenting microorganisms, lactic acid bacteria and yeast, are used as a catalyst, for improvement of nutritional quality, good organoleptic properties, and safety were used. The moisture, ash, protein, fat, CHO and energy ranged from 78.9 – 83.4, 0.97 -4.8, 7.3 – 9.75, 6.71 – 2.33, 2.31 – 5.47 and 78.05 – 125.95% for all samples respectively. The result of microbial activities such as E. coli, Enterobacteriaceae, Lactobacillus and coliforms in borde, korefe and booka drink were 0.51, 1.67 ×10¹, 1.2 ×10⁴, and 3.67 ×10⁵ respectively. The nature of beverage preparation in Ethiopia, traditional household processing, associated lower microorganisms with a fermented beverage, and their contribution toward improvement. Therefore, this study shows that the alcoholic contents booka (1.53±0.2) < korefe (4.21±0.2) < borede (4.67±0.2), this is due to the fermenting time during preparation. In the future, to improve its quality, it is important to standardize the methods of beverage fermentation processes and advanced technologies.