the_ginger_ninja

Recipes 

It is basically three 2.5Kw immersion heaters covering the base of the vat. On top of this is a mesh grill that bottles sit on. Cover bottles to 2" from the tops (ish) with water and turn machine on. Does about 180 330ml bottles per batch.

I use this:
http://www.vigoltd.com/in-bottle-pasteuriser.php


This kit costs £3,500!!!!! Plus £800/900 for the legs!!!! + VAT!!!!

When I'm doing it at home I bought a £6 temperature probe, set it to beep at a max temp and min temp then heat the water without bottles. You can heat it 10 much higher than 72 at this point because as soon as you put bottles in then the temp plummets. Once you re-reached temp then turn gas down to 'simmer', come back in 5 and check. The min/max alarms should warn you if you go over the required temp.

the_ginger_ninja

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Oh, as long as the caps are on and sealed there should be zero loss of carbonation. The CO2 will re-saturate in to the liquid.

Mitch311

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Ok,

So quick question if you pasteurise will it effect a brews ability to age?

I am going to put down 3 ciders in a week or two. 1 simple quick one like Pappers, 1 using pure juice that is apple, pomegranate and cranberry which I hope will not need a secondary either and a blueberry/apple, using blueberry juice and blended/crushed blueberries. But the two flavoured ones are going to be about 6-7% and I think they will need a tad of aging to smooth them out?

Thanks!

the_ginger_ninja

Recipes 

Ah, so now I'm stepping outside of my comfort zone! I'm not a drinker, or a brewer, so I couldn't comment I'm afraid so I would have to defer to someone else on that front!

dinnerstick

Recipes 

they might not require a lot of age, they are not super high alcohol, and sugar can to some extent paper over the harshness of young ciders. (i assume you are bottling them sweet or why else would you be pasteurizing...) that's not to say they won't benefit from a few months in the bottle, just that it shouldn't stop you sampling a few early on

Werbi

Recipes 

I'll add my tale of woe.. Initially tried 8 bottles in 190º water for 10 minutes. Only one survived, the rest shot the caps off hard enough to fold over the edge on the lid of the pot (tempered glass survived). It was exciting. Even several minutes after removing the cider in the blown bottles read 160º.

I highly recommend running a test batch with opened bottles and a thermometer to know the time/temp it will take for your "system" to get up to pateurization temps without going too high (which can be both dangerous and deleterious to the flavor). Mine was force carbed @35º and about 12-15lbs. 8 12oz bottles to 2.5-3 gallons of 190º water... way too hot for a 10 minute soak at that ratio.

I poured the blown bottles into a soda bottle and will force carb with a carb cap -doubt they'll be good but I can see what the high heat/HSA did to them.

Cheers, Werbi

Werbi

Recipes 

I ended up trying a second batch with a bath temp of 170º after testing open bottles at 175 which heated the contents to over 150º and had only one cap fail out of eight bottles. I like the idea, and have a sweet mead I'd like to heat stabilize so I am going to use my new oven thermometer to measure the average time for the contents of an open bottle (foil cap?) to hit 140º at a set temp. I will then try a two bath system so I don't overheat the bottles during the rest. I will fill a cooler with 140-150º water for the rest and transfer the bottles from the heating bath to the holding bath.

I did do a side-by-side taste test with a homebrewing friend and we did not notice a difference in the ciders from the cooking (we tried and thought we tasted differences but honestly would not be able to tell them apart in a blind tasting with any consistency). I also pasteurized a bottle of beer for comparison and we didn't notice a difference in quality either. -we were shocked. Will have to pasteurize a few bottles and age them alongside unpasteurized beer to see if the pasteurization improves their shelf life or yields any difference long term.

LeBreton

Recipes 

Wait, if you have a kegging system, why are you pasteurizing closed and pressurized cider at all?

__________________
Ithaca is gorges
Bellwether Hard Cider

Fermenting - Albemarle cidre cuvee
Secondary - Big Red Ida Red cider,TBD juice base (Maple?).
Conditioning - Newtown Pippin & Keepsake cider

BelMamba

Recipes 

Hi everyone,

as indicated a few times before, I did investigate a modification to Papper's method and I used this modified method now for 3 6-gallon batches (and a few smaller ones) without any bottle bombs so I feel save to present it as a "standard recipe".

Motivation: This modified method is more than twice as fast, reduces initial thermal stress on the bottles by 20% and should reach at least the same temperature (if not higher) in-bottle. Disadvantage: you need one more piece of equipment - a rack that keeps the bottles away from the bottom of the boiling pot

Before starting: I use this method for cider that I stop whenever I feel it tastes best with no regards on how active the fermentation still is. My personal preference in cider is 100% apple juice cider that uses it's own sugars to sweeten to taste even if that means a little less alcohol ... but it works with fermenting through and back-sweetening just fine. I did some gallon batches where I fermented through and back-sweetened with dextrose far beyond the typical priming amount.

Method: The basic method is the same than suggested by Pappers but with three major differences:
- The heat stays on when bottles are in
- The initial temperature is lower
- A rack needs to be inserted into the pot so that the bottles are not touching the bottom of the pot. In my case they are about 3/4" from the bottom so I have a good water layer in between bottles and heater. I have not tried what happens without a rack but others have had exploding bottles by thermal stress and my gut feel told me not to try this without!

So you basically heat the water to 170F instead of 190F, insert the bottles (I did 7-8 per batch) and keep the heat on so that the water reaches 170-175F at the end of the 10 minutes you keep the bottles in (as in the original). This allows you to take out the bottles and put in the next batch immediately (this is where the time saving comes in, with Papper's original method and our equipment, it took us 15 minutes to have the water back at 190 between batches .... so the whole process is 60% faster for us)

Why should it work? The true measure of how reliable the pasteurization has succeeded is the temperature in the bottle. This temperature depends on how much heat the water has transferred into the bottle. Heat transfer is proportional to the temperature difference. So with the lower temperature at the beginning (for my method), there is less heat flowing into the bottle. Assuming cellar temperature for the bottles (60F), Papper's original method has a delta of 130F while mine has 110F, roughly 20+% less transfer (and less thermal stress on the bottle). However, with Papper's method (switching off the flame), the water will cool to 155-160F (by inserting the bottles) and stay there while my method recovers temperature to 170-175F. If we assume that the bottles are pretty close to this temperature for the second half of the bath - let's say 130F or so, the deltas (and thus the temperature transfer) towards the end are 40-45F vs. 25-30F, i.e. ~35% higher for my method. In other words, as closer the bottles come to the water temperature, as higher is the effect of the 10-15F more that my method produces at the end. So I think it is rather reasonable to assume that the in-bottle temperature after my method is at least as high as in Papper's method and I have had no bottle bomb in 3 batches even though I clearly had sugars left.

However, I did not measure the in-bottle temperature so all I can say is that it worked well for me and my understanding of thermodynamics (I am a physicist) makes me sleep soundly using this method - but obvious disclaimer: no guarantees since there are still many variables in play (original temperature of the cider, size of the pot / water amount, heating mechanism - i.e. pot bottom temperature ...)

Good luck, thank's Papper's for your detailed write up, I would never have started with pasteurized cider without your encouraging posts and details and it is a golden bullet for the natural style of cider I prefer. I hope this contributes a little bit back to the community ...

smyrnaquince

Recipes 

Could you take one bottle that you just removed from the water bath, open it, and check the temperature of the cider that is in it? I'm really curious about what the internal temperature got up to.

Also, people might want to read this thread about a similar method. Just trying to give credit to those who have worked this problem before.