# Pasteurizing cider.



## Dave70 (17/10/13)

I'm over all this back-sweetening carry on so here's the plan. 

Make a cider as per usual.
Progressively sample until its where it needs to be taste wise. 
Crash chill.
Transfer to keg.
Sit keg in the boil kettle and top up with water - so its kind of like a double boiler.
Gently heat to about 55 deg and hold for 10 minutes or so. 
Gas as usual once everything cools down.

From my not often cider making memory, juice sits around 1.050 and seems to still have that 'apple-ish' flavor to about four or five days in before it starts to dry out.
I'm planning a cool ferment so it doesn't run away to fast so this may slow the process down some, plus I think it gives better results. The aim is obviously neither to dry nor cloying.

I'd like it to finish around 5% so I'm thinking I should ramp the OG up to around 1.065 or there about's. How's that sound?

Sound reasonable?


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## barls (17/10/13)

you would need to filter as the yeast would burst adding an off flavour and i think you would need longer than 10 minutes at 55


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## technobabble66 (17/10/13)

Hey
A vaguely similar topic was discussed over pastuerising Ginger beer in bottles, slightly off topic within this thread, at entry #7.

http://aussiehomebrewer.com/topic/74807-all-grain-ginger-beer/

The bit i thought relevant:
"The minimum temp required for pasturisation is 63 and must be held (at the center of the liquid, not just on the surface of the bottle) for at least 30 minutes. 60 is close to a pasturising temp but not quite there. You may get pasturisation at 60 but contact time would be exponentially longer."
courtesy of Airgead

Just pointing out the technique you propose might need a higher temp for a bit longer: 63°C for 30-40mins.

And a bottle is easier/quicker to heat than a much-larger-volume keg.

2c


Good luck, & let us know how you go.

I, too, am over this back-sweetening shenanigins.
There should definitely be a more elegant way to sweeten our alcoholic beverages, rather than mixing up a dinky sugar syrup ever time we wish to quench our thirst.
And heating up carbonated glass bottles sounds like a much more manly pursuit. :super:


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## Tim (17/10/13)

If you heat pasteurise your cider, the flavour will change and it will take on a cooked apple flavour - thats the theory anyway.

Give it a go though and tell us what happens.

tim


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## JDW81 (17/10/13)

Dave70 said:


> Sound reasonable?


The real cider boffins would probably say "take your skirt off and drink it dry", but I'm one to make inflammatory statements so we'll leave that up to them.

You'll need higher temps for longer, but as for the funny flavours that come with pasteurising I can't really comment. 

Give it a go and report back.

JD


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## RelaxedBrewer (17/10/13)

I have heat pasteurised cider a couple of times how ever I did it a bottle. It works well and does not give cooked apple flavour. I will find the thread that I got the idea from when I get home later tonight.


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## Airgead (17/10/13)

Depends on what bug you are trying to kill but salmonella is used as the benchmark. E-coli is similar. Others can be harder. Not sure about yeast...






Or there is this one for lacto bacteria in milk...

Temperature Time Pasteurization Type
63ºC (145ºF)_1)_ 30 minutes Vat Pasteurization
72ºC (161ºF)_1)_ 15 seconds High temperature short time Pasteurization (HTST)
89ºC (191ºF) 1.0 second Higher-Heat Shorter Time (HHST)
90ºC (194ºF) 0.5 seconds Higher-Heat Shorter Time (HHST)
94ºC (201ºF) 0.1 seconds Higher-Heat Shorter Time (HHST)
96ºC (204ºF) 0.05 seconds Higher-Heat Shorter Time (HHST)
100ºC (212ºF) 0.01 seconds Higher-Heat Shorter Time (HHST)
138ºC (280ºF)

Edit : bugger. table formatting stuffed up... had to do it manually.


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## RelaxedBrewer (17/10/13)

Here is the guide that I followed.
http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/easy-stove-top-pasteurizing-pics-193295/

This method heats water to ~90C then turns of the heat and submerges the bottles in the water for ten minutes.
I think I uped the time a little to about 13-14 minutes and still did not get any cooked flavours.


If anyone is going to use this method, follow the guide and don't do anything stupid, it can be dangerous.


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## Dave70 (17/10/13)

JDW81 said:


> The real cider boffins would probably say "*take your skirt off and drink it dry", *but I'm one to make inflammatory statements so we'll leave that up to them.
> 
> You'll need higher temps for longer, but as for the funny flavours that come with pasteurising I can't really comment.
> 
> ...


It's for my wife.
So that statment works on many levels.


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## Dave70 (17/10/13)

Airgead said:


> Depends on what bug you are trying to kill but salmonella is used as the benchmark. E-coli is similar. Others can be harder. Not sure about yeast...
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I appreciate the manual input.

I'm realy just trying to kill the yeasties so they stop doing their job and halt fermentation at a set point. I suppose they wont be doing much at 2 deg in a crash chilled keg, so maby thats an option.

I was under the impression thats how (pasteurization) the pros went about delivering different styles.


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## Airgead (18/10/13)

The pros may do it that way (the real mass produced stuff like strongbow almost certainly does) but they will use a continuous flow flash pasturisation system with volatile recovery. That flows the liquid through a plate heat exchanger or coil exchanger (like a wort chiller in reverse) with a tamp of >90c and a contact time of maybe 1 or 2 seconds. The liquid is in very thin pipes so the heating and coling curves are very sharp - straight up to 90 then straight back down again in a cooling system. Volatiles that escape as vapour are recovered and re-condensed. Its a pretty serious industrial process. Some may use sterile filtration or centrifuging as that has less flavour impact.

They then force carb and bottle

On a domestic scale pasturisation is really quite hard to do well. Even jam makers have failures and that stuff sits at 110c for ages bafore being packed into hot jars. All it takes is an air bubble and some organisms can survive.

Cheers
Dave


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## Greg.L (18/10/13)

The advantage cider has is low pH, makes it easy to pasteurise. A lot of people pasteurise with success, one basic method is to bring the cider to 65C for 10 min then allow to cool down. When you add in the time heating and cooling it gives plenty of pasteurisation units. The flavour might change a little but it is worth it if you want to backsweeten.


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## Airgead (18/10/13)

True. It is PH dependent. Alcohol also helps. Couldn't find a time/temp/ph chart online though.

Main thing to note is that whatever you do, the whole of the liquid needs to be at your temp for the pasturisation time. You can't just put a bottle in 65c water and start the timer. The whole of the liquid needs to reach the temp before the timer starts. For a glass bottle that can be quite a long time as the glass will insulate. It could be 10+ minutes depending on the temp of your pasturisation bath. Will also depend on bottle size, glass thickness....

A 20l keg will take a long time through sheer bulk but at least the stainless steel isn't an insulator. And I could see how you could suspend a thermometer inside the keg to check on internal temps. Hard to do with sealed bottles.

Cheers
Dave


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## MastersBrewery (18/10/13)

With herms running at a very slow pace and a cfc I think this would be doable, you would then need to force carb, and if bottling cpbf, all the gear is available depend what gear you have at hand

Sent from my GT-P5110 using Tapatalk


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## Greg.L (18/10/13)

It is easy with bottles because you only need to measure the temperature of the contents of one sample bottle, the rest can be assumed to be the same. Obviously you need to measure the temperature of the cider and not the water the bottle is sitting in. There isn't so much need to pasteurise kegs because you can keep them cold and let off pressure if it gets too high.


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## Not For Horses (18/10/13)

Slightly skewed from the pasteurising issue here but what about letting the initial batch ferment out completely and allowing most of the yeast and sediment to drop out and then add in fresh juice on the day of pasteurisation? I think you'd get a cleaner and better tasting final product. Then pasteurise with what ever method you decide on.


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## technobabble66 (18/10/13)

Greg.L said:


> It is easy with bottles because you only need to measure the temperature of the contents of one sample bottle, the rest can be assumed to be the same..


Also, if you were doing this, you could just get a spare bottle (of same size), fill with water, cap it (maybe not even necessary), and place in the hot water with the other cider/GB bottles. For this style of heating, water should be virtually the same as the real stuff.

One minor detail though, i'm guessing you'd need to put a thermometer into the centre of the water volume within the bottle, given that that's where you need the temp to hit ~65°C (& hold for 10min).
So maybe don't cap it, then you can check in regularly/continuously, and then get the timer going for 10 min.

Relaxed Brewer's method of pasteurisation was the other technique i'd come across that sounded reasonable - heat the water to boil, place bottles into it for 30min after turning off heat (& let temp drop a few degrees first). Sounded safe & reliable; well, sort of.

@Not For Horses - could be a great idea: get a bit more fresh apple flavour in there. The only problem could be knowing the exact amount of sugar you've added, in terms of enough to carb plus enough to sweeten. Though i'm sure a few hydro readings & some clever maths might solve that...


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## spaced (18/10/13)

If you're kegging not bottling. Maybe adding a preservative and then sweetening with sugar might be the go. I had westons vintage cider last night and it is sweet and on the side of the bottle says something about sulphites.

From wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_sorbate



> Also known as "wine stabilizer", potassium sorbate produces sorbic acid when added to wine. It serves two purposes. When active fermentation has ceased and the wine is racked for the final time after clearing, potassium sorbate will render any surviving yeast incapable of multiplying. Yeast living at that moment can continue fermenting any residual sugar into CO2 and alcohol, but when they die no new yeast will be present to cause future fermentation. When a wine is sweetened before bottling, potassium sorbate is used to prevent refermentation when used in conjunction with potassium metabisulfite. It is primarily used with sweet wines, sparkling wines, and some hard ciders but may be added to table wines which exhibit difficulty in maintaining clarity after fining.


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## Airgead (18/10/13)

You would need to crash chill to suspend the yeast before adding sorbate. Its a yeast inhibitor but I don't think it will stop an active fermentation. Not unless you used a massive dose. I could be wrong though. Never used it myself. You;d probably have to dose with metabisulphite as well to knock the active yeast out. I don't use sulphites... the missus is allergic but they may work for you.


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## nathan_madness (18/10/13)

I heat pasturise all my ciders up to 70deg shut off the heat then straight in to the kegs to chill and gas. It's simple and works well with no off flavors. You can add any flavored cordial to make a nice sweet cider. I'm just about to do one tomorrow that will be Lime & Elderflower.


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## JoeyJoeJoe (18/10/13)

Do you loose alot of alchol by heating the cider up to 70C? Or do you do it in an enclosed vesal? (just realised I cant spell vessal vesall?)

EDIT: Two e's Vessel!


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## nathan_madness (19/10/13)

Alcohol boil off point it 78.5 deg and if it is mixed with water (i.e. juice) it is even higher. So there should be very miniman to no loss of alcohol.


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