Production of yellow wine from Camellia Oleifera meal pretreated by mixed cultured solid‐state fermentation

Summary Camellia oleifera meal was evaluated to be a potential feedstock for the production of yellow wine ( YW ), and process conditions were investigated. In this study, C. oleifera meal was firstly pretreated using mixed cultured Bacillus subtilis and Aspergillus niger under solid‐substrate fermentation to degrade the tea saponin ( TS ) for the following YW fermentation. Response surface methodology helped evaluate the effects of the selected operating parameters, and the optimal condition at a fixed time of 4 days, which gave a 67.84 ± 0.23% degradation rate of TS , was reached as inoculum concentration of 16%, initial moisture content of 55% and temperature of 30 °C. Finally, 7‐day fermentation was harvested to be the most suitable pretreatment for producing YW from C. oleifera meal, and the twice‐feeding fermentation for YW was obtained as wheat koji 12% and active yeast 1.2%. In addition, ample amino acids, phenolic components and the trace TS endowed the C. oleifera wine, the more nutritional characteristics.