Influência do fracionamento no destilado para a otimização da produção da cachaça de alambique: uma prática pedagógica no processo produtivo

Abstract

The present work analyzed the contribution of a technical research project applied in the teaching-learning process, being waited that the academics of the third and fourth periods of the course of Technology in Production of Cachaça of the Escola Agrotécnica Federal de Salinas, as active agents, thar understood and solidified the knowledge. To evaluate the pedagogic process, the method of evaluation of individuo s attitude of 14 subjects was used, being built relative questionnaires to the two main phases of the research project: production process; sensory analysis. It was elaborated two evaluation instruments with affirmatives regarding the concepts and necessary knowledges to understand these stages, punctuated with a scale varying among "disagree a lot" to the "agree a lot", with the center in neither disagree nor agree", totalizing seven points. The first was applied in four different stages and the second in two, being the first application representative of the condition zero, without involvement with the activities of the project. The distillation was developed by three repetitions for the three longed experimental conditions. The distilled product was evaluated physicochemical and sensorially. In the physicochemical determinations the effective legislation was used. In the sensory evaluations tests discriminative and of acceptance was used. The results were analyzed statisticaly by tests of averages of Tukey, Dunnett and Boferroni, with level of significance of 5%. As for the production process, it was verified that the average for each subject increased gradually in the tests as the learning was rendered, arriving to the last test with a larger homogeneity in the answers, whose averages were 6,1; 6,6; 6,5 and 6,9 for TI, TII, TIII and TIV, respectively. In the beginning of the process, it was verified differences (p ≤ 0,05) among the tests (TI and TII) for some subjects, reaching superior values to 20% for two of them and in smaller proportion (superior to 10%) for other five, however no significant. In the test, (TIV) differences (p ≤ 0,05) were observed for most of the subjects in relation to the TI, however, the two subject with larger diversity in the agreement levels, obtained the largest percentile values (25,2 and 34,9%,) of difference in relation to the TI, indicating as the developed activities contributed to elevate their knowledge level. The results obtained in the sensory evaluation indicated that the students obtained better understanding of the activities, not presenting significant differences (p ≤ 0,05) between the initial and the final test, with averages of 6,4 and 6,7 for TI and TII, respectively. The subjects correlated the concepts obtained with the activities of the project. So their participation collaborated that their learning level was perfected. In the physicochemical results for the product, a significant difference (p ≤ 0,05) was verified in the alcoholic content of the heart fraction with 80% in relation to the fractions with 85% to 90%. However, in the sensorial results, were not detected significant differences in the evaluation of the three heart fractions distilled, as in the tests discriminative used to analyze differences, as in consumer's test. Therefore, the work was important to link the academics to the new technologies and to the world of the applied research, making possible the construction of the own knowledge.