This may sound crazy but hear me out.

[dcwilliam]

Ok so I got a cider can kit thing at big w today to use for a experiment. I normally all grain brew so this is new for me.
I hope to ferment this out as per normal but then I would like to sweeten again with Apple concentrate.
Then I want to keg it and gas it.
To prevent the Apple consentrate taking off again with the yeast, could I put the "cider wort" into a pot and use my sous vide cooker to heat up the liquid enough to pasteurize the yeast off prior to kegging.
Obviously everything would be sanitized and all that, but I was wondering if it is possible and what temp and how long would the pasteurization take.

 

[donald_trub]

Never done it, not an expert, but I think potassium metabisulfite might help here. It's what wine people use to stop fermentation. A quick Google suggests cider folks use it too. It should be available from your LHBS. Campden tablets could also do the trick.

 

[MHB]

Doable, but you need to be careful.
About 70oC for 10 minutes would probably be enough, but I'm not sure from your post if you were talking about heating the whole brew or just the apple cider. You would have to heat everything that's going into the keg.
One thing you want to avoid is heating yeast, good chance of getting some off flavours if you cook yeast, so make sure you either filter very well or fine aggressively, I would then crash chill down to like -1oC and leave for a week before decanting the beer. Make sure all the yeast stays in the fermenter.

I have put a sweetened cider in the fridge at about 4oC as a test, over about six months it dropped less than 2 points (1.002). If you can keep the Apple/Beer cold and not keep it for a long time you could probably avoid a lot of mucking around and reduce the chances of changing the flavour in unexpected ways, just by keeping it cold.
Mark

I like the idea of using a Sous Vide, been thinking about using one to heat a small Hex for a rims type system. Just a small insulated pot (say 5L) with a coil, the SV being a stirrer/heater/temp controller/timer all in one and not all that dear on eBay these days.
Has a lot of advantages.
Mark

 

[JDW81]

I'd go with Mark's suggestion, less risk of off flavours from yeast being cooked.

I like my cider's dry so I let them ferment out, however a friend of mine does this as he prefers a little bit of residual sweetness. He uses preservative free AJ, and ferments with wyeast cider yeast, ferments until the right amount of residual sweetness is left then cold conditions for a week. It then gets carefully decanted into the keg, leaving more of the yeast in the primary.

I've sampled over a few weeks and there is no appreciable change in sweetness (most yeasts are pretty inactive at 2-4oC). I don't know how you'd go with it over months, but worth a try as less risk than introducing off flavours.

JD

 

[dcwilliam]

Great replays thank you everyone.

I have a little 5lt keg, so what I might do is sous vide 5lt of the same batch and that way I can compare it to the 12lt left over which I will keg and just keep chilled in my keezer, all this after cold crashing ect.
Will be a good experiment to do and to be able to compare will be interesting.
This is all for the Mrs but I have thought about cider for a while and if this works it could open up my ideas a bit more.

And I think my sous vide all in one stick was around $100 off eBay, I love it I find it is a great way to cook.

 

[captnhaddock]

Never done it, not an expert, but I think potassium metabisulfite might help here. It's what wine people use to stop fermentation. A quick Google suggests cider folks use it too. It should be available from your LHBS. Campden tablets could also do the trick.

While the So2 will retard fermentation of sugar, it will not stop fermentation per se (there isn't a practical way at the homebrewer level to do this). Your best bet is to ferment dry, back sweeten and then add BOTH So2 and Potassium Sorbate to prevent the yeast from kicking off again. I do agree that cold-crashing / cold-filtering to pull most of the lees out of the cider is a practical way to both clarify and reduce the total yeast count to a level where (when kept cold) it's not going to re-ferment.

here's a primmer on So2 managment in wine which will be helpful should you go down that route. https://morewinemaking.com/articles/SO2_management