pasteurise in the dish washer?

Have any one ever tried to pasteurise in the dishwasher?

I've sometimes used the sanitize setting on my dishwasher to sanitize already cleaned bottles.

What exactly are you attempting to pasteurize?

Bottles of beer ;-)

Ah, then yes, it's possible. It seems to work best if your dishwasher actually has a sanitize setting.

I make sure all my bottles are clean. Maybe I'm overly cautious, but I then clean the dishwasher (remove any food particles from the filter/trap and spray with Star San). Then I run the sanitize setting with the bottles and NO detergent. With the model dishwasher I have, this setting takes awhile to complete, so keep that in mind if you're trying to time it with when you bottle.

akglyd said:

Have any one ever tried to pasteurise in the dishwasher?

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The only occasions I've had bottles break is after using the heat dry setting on my dishwasher. I wouldn't recommend it.

If I'm interpreting what you are asking correctly, I'm assuming you want to put already capped and full beers in the dishwasher so the beer is pasteurized?

Interesting idea....

oh, bottles full of beer... that I've not done. You'd at least have to wait until bottle conditioning is over.

Why does the beer need to be pasteurized?

Science experiment...
Just take some bottles to try to se the result.
Anyone else who have tried?

The formula for calculating a PU's is:

PU = t × 1.393(T − 60)

To properly pasteurize your beer you need two things to happen 1) the temperature of the beer needs to be slowly be raised so that you acheive 8+ PU's (roughly 60 deg C) and then held at that temperature for roughly 10 min. 2) to ensure this happens the cold spot temperature (center point of the bottle) needs to hit that temp and maintain for the same time period. 8+ PU's is roughly the range which will kill any bacteria, yeast or wild yeast.

The one concern i would have would be that the temp in the dishwasher raises too quick and causes thermal shock to the bottles at which point they could burst.

Larger breweries which pastuerize thier beer typically do so in tunnel style pasteurizers where the temperature is slowly raised to 62.5 deg C and held there for a predetermined time and slowly lowered back down to room temp. There are preheat, heat, hold, pre-cool and cooling zones (typically 10 zones total). Its done this way to reduce the damage done by pastuerization to the beer and reduce the chances of thermal shock to the bottles.

so you're trying to kill the yeast and maintain a pre determined carb rate?

I wouldn't call this process "pasteurizing" per se... more like sanitizing.

I do it all the time. You can't just throw dirty bottles in the dishwasher though. Clean them well, then place the bottles upside-down on the rods, run a normal cycle without soap.

I have never personally seen a "sanitize" cycle on any home dishwasher, but the normal cycle works for me just fine.

Afterward, remove the bottles and set upright on a table for 10 minutes to chill them down a bit. Fill your bottles with the beer + priming sugar, cap and wait 3 weeks.

FYI - Some people "bake" their empty bottles too. Seems to also work.

He's talking about doing this with bottles full of beer and capped... I misread that at first too

My dishwasher, and many newer model dishwashers, have a sanitize setting that meets NSF standards. I didn't buy mine because of that, but apparently it's quite popular with families that have kids.

I tried this with a batch of cider and found that it didn't work in my dishwasher. I used a thermocouple and found that my dishwasher it got hot enough to pasteurize, but then I add the bottled cider and put the thermocouple into one if the bottles and found that my dishwasher WAS NOT strong enough to bring all of that liquid to the proper temps. Now I'm sure there are indeed dishwashers out there strong enough for this, but I would not recomend it unless you can verify that your washer can get you the temps you need or you could have bottle bombs on your hands

Mhmmm

william_shakes_beer said:

so you're trying to kill the yeast and maintain a pre determined carb rate?

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Yupp

I would be concerned about increasing the pressure and breaking the bottles. Based on a post above, it sounds like the commercial breweries use a speical oven that raises and lowers the temps slowly to avoid thermal shock. Perhaps you could approximate that process by using the oven and baking in steps... 120 15 minutes, 130, 140, etc, and then double the step temps until one breaks to see where the limit point is.

I believe that commercial breweries use a filter to physically remove the yeast, then force carb and bottle. Would it be more realistic to approximate that instead? perhaps filter to a keg, force carb with co2 and then bottle and cap?

Why would you want to kill the yeast in your beer? Beer is alive and it tastes good that way. Kill the yeast, and over time you may have tons of off flavors on your hands.

I believe the OP is attempting to dial in a particular level of carbonization, like os done in commercial breweries.

When major breweries fill their bottles the yeast is already out of the beer and it's already carbonated. The pasteurizers are there to kill off any bacteria that are introduced from either the containers (cans and bottles get rinsed out) or the lids (on cans) or crowns (bottles). They are very careful of how much pasteurization goes on, and they test their pasteurizers routinely to make sure they're within the specified range for the beer. Just because they run a 12-oz can and they are within spec doesn't mean the settings don't change when they switch to a different heating/cooling profile when they go to 16-oz can because the thermodynamics and heat transfer change.

You could try to throw a few bottles in your dishwasher, but I wouldn't recommend it. You're not going to have a control to judge against, and certainly won't be accomplishing anything that resembles what the big boys are doing.

Sorry, don't want to rain on your parade, just giving some more insight on the complexity of the pasteurization process. Cheers!

Thanks.
Just happy for all new knowledge.