Tequila colony size every four hours. This process goes on for 24–48 hours. Next, yeast turns acetaldehyde into ethyl alcohol which is known as one of the organoleptic compounds produced in fermentation. The two main categories of yeast used in tequila are commercial brewers yeast and yeast that comes from precultivated existing yeast that has been preserved. The use of either type of yeast can result in different end products of tequila. Tequila is a distilled beverage that is made from the fermentation of the sugars found from the blue agave plant once it has been cooked, the main sugar being
Tequila fructose. Through the fermentation process, many factors influence the higher alcohol content of tequila, which are molecules such as isobutyl alcohol and isoamyl alcohol, and ethanol. These parameters include the type of yeast strain, the age of the agave plant itself, temperature, and the carbon/nitrogen ratio. However, the type of yeast strain used and the carbon/nitrogen factors have the biggest influence on the production of higher alcohols, this is not surprisingly as higher alcohol and ethanol production is an intrinsic property of the metabolism of each strain. The type of yeast most commonly found in tequila is "Saccharomyces cerevisiae", which