The microbial composition of the final rice wines at the different plants are presented in Table 4. Mean bacterial populations are shown in the right section of Fig. 2. Plant A produces only sterile products, and accordingly, no analysis of a non-sterile rice winewas performed. APCs of the nonesterile turbid rice wine at stage 11 were similar to those of the previous secondary fermentation stage.APCs for the final product ranged from 7.9 to 8.9 log CFU/ml (mean 8.4 log CFU/ml). By contrast, APCs were reduced significantly (P < 0.05) to 2.4 log CFU/ml by heat sterilization. Counts for LAB
(mean 8.4 log CFU/ml) and fungi (mean 8.3 log CFU/ml) in the nonsterile wine were similar to those of APCs. AAB were detected in nonesterile wine (mean 2.4 log CFU/ml). LAB, fungi, and AAB were either eliminated or significantly reduced to negligible levels by heat sterilization (P < 0.05). A few LAB were isolated at plant D (0.3
log CFU/ml). B. cereus was only detected in the non-sterile wine from plant C (0.3 log CFU/ml), and the sterile wine from plant A (1.7 log CFU/ml).