Fermentation profile of green Spanish-style Manzanilla olives according to NaCl content in brine.

This work studies the effects of the partial substitution of NaCl with potassium and calcium chloride salts on the fermentation profile of Spanish-style green Manzanilla olives. For this purpose, response surface methodology based in an enlarged simplex centroid mixture design with constrain (∑salts = 100 g/L) was used. Regarding to physicochemical characteristics, pH decreased when CaCl2 increased, titratable acidity was lower in presence of KCl while combined acidity increased as the contents of KCl and CaCl2 were close to the barycentre of the experiment (∼33.33% each salt). Regarding to microbiological profile, Enterobacteriaceae growth was slight stimulated in presence of high CaCl2 contents, yeast patterns were not linked to the initial brine compositions, while the maximum lactic acid bacteria population decreased slightly as KCl and CaCl2 increased in the proportion 1:1, although a moderate (equilibrated) content of both may be stimulating. Results obtained in this work show that Spanish-style green Manzanilla cv. can be fermented in diverse mixtures of chloride salts, albeit the initial CaCl2 should be limited to 20-30 g/L to prevent excessive Enterobacteriaceae growth; combining it with a similar proportion of KCl may also improve LAB predominance.