The water activity of the sausage samples during fermentation and
ripening are presented in Fig. 1. The initial aw of all treatments ranged
from 0.93 to 0.95. The 5% KPS sausages showed the lowest initial aw
(0.93), whereas the control, 15% KS and 2% KPS sausages had an aw of
0.95. The first remarkable changes in aw were observed after seven
days of fermentation in all batches. The greatest decrease in the aw
value occurred in sausage samples that contained 5% kimchi-powder.
Therefore, the final aw value after processing for 4weeks in the batch
that contained 5% KPS was significantly lower (0.89) than that of the control
(0.93). However, the addition of 15% kimchi and 2% kimchi-powder
showed no effect on the changes in aw value when compared with the
control, and both had a final aw value of 0.93. The batches treated with
5% and 10% kimchi showed lower final aw values of 0.92 and 0.91, respectively,
than the control and the batch treated with 15% kimchi. Taken together,
these results indicate that the addition of a high concentration of
kimchi-powder into the sausagemixture lowered the initial and the final