Keg pasteurize using my Keggle

I have a cider that I am planning on back sweetening. So I would like to kill the yeast. I was thinking of transferring to the corney. Heating up water in my Keggle to 180 or so and dropping in the keg. Does anyone see a problem with this technique?

I was thinking of doing a test run to see what kind of temperature loss I would experience using just room temp water in the corney. Aiming to settle in just above 160.

WHOA!!! You are overthinking this!!

No need to pastuerize at all if you are kegging and force carbing. To backsweeten in a keg, just dump about 1/2 gallon of the SWEET apple juice you originally used per 4.5 gallons of kegged cider, cool to serving temps in the kegerator, and force carb. Easy breezy!

Let me know if you need help with the technique! Backsweetening is a PITA in a bottle, but simple in a keg.

I was hoping to kill off the yeast so that I do not have to keep the cider refrigerated. I am sure it would start fermenting if left at room temperature.

Well at some point you are going to put it in the kegorator at serving temps and drink it, right? Just backsweeten with juice then.

To answer your original question, I think you are going to find difficult to actually pasteurize an entire keg due to the thermal mass. Just like it can take 30-45 minutes to cool wort in an ice bath, it is going to take 30-45 minutes to get a keg of cider up to 161F+, even with boiling water. You also don't want to expose the rubber gaskets throughout the corny keg to high temps, they aren't rated for it, so that might slow things down a bit as well.

I would just store it cold, backsweeten with juice, and drink it, but if you want to try to pastuerize it, go for it.

To kill the yeast just get some potassium sorbate and use the appropriate amount and that will kill your yeast and you can play with what ever you want to sweeten it.

bryanj said:

to kill the yeast just get some potassium sorbate and use the appropriate amount and that will kill your yeast and you can play with what ever you want to sweeten it.

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+1

BryanJ said:

To kill the yeast just get some potassium sorbate and use the appropriate amount and that will kill your yeast and you can play with what ever you want to sweeten it.

Click to expand...

This will only work if fermentation has completed and the cider has cleared and been racked off, you also have to add campden at the same time.

I am also considering pasteurizing in a 5 gallon corney. I actually want to halt fermentation then force carb and bottle the cider using a beer gun. I have successfully pasteurized 2 batches in my 1 gallon keg and it worked perfectly.

My thoughts:

Regular o-rings should be able to handle 160, but to be safe I think I will use silicone o-rings on the keg I use for this.

1. place keg in my electric keggle.
2. Set temp at 160
3. Let it come up to temp with keg submerged
4. Periodically bleed pressure off keg as temp raises
5. When it hits 160, hold temp for 30 minutes to insure good pasteurization
6. Remove keg and let cool
7. attach CO2 at 5psi while cooling to prevent a vacuum from forming in the keg as it cools. (kegs are rated for pressure, not sure how they would do in a vacuum).

Glad I found this thread! Sorbate and Campden DOES NOT stop an active fermentation. The ONLY way to do it is pasteurization. I attempted to pasteurize my cider in a corny keg on Monday, but after reading about temp tolerances of yeast, I came to the conclusion that 120F for 15 minutes was not sufficient. So I'm taking another crack at it today to get it up to 150. It's under 10 psi and already carbed with 30 psi, but I'm not going to worry about it, considering that 150 isn't going to create too much pressure, and the boiling point for the alcohol is going to be higher because of the pressure (seeing as the boiling point of liquids is higher at sea level than at altitude because of more atmospheric pressure, and some personal experience with boiling points of alcohol under pressure that I'm not at liberty to discuss per forum rules). Plus my keg says it's rated for 130 PSI.

The reason I'm doing this is because I wan't to me able to bottle my entire 5 gallon batch, since I don't have a keggerator. Plus I have a few friends out of state who I promised to ship a few bottles to, and I really don't feel like having homeland security knocking at my door because a bottle bomb went off while being shipped.

IMHO, I wouldn't keep pulling the ring while heating. You will be letting lots of apple flavors escape in the heating process. If your really worried bout the pressures, you can always check with your CO2 regulator. That's how I was checking mine the first go around.

There ya go! 155 F for 30 minutes.

CodyA said:

There ya go! 155 F for 30 minutes.

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Any idea what the temp inside the keg was? With the small surface area of 155 degree water you have in contact with the keg it seems unlikely that the internal temp would even reach 155 in 30 minutes.

Had a surface temp thermometer (the one with a laser that painters use to see if a surface is too hot or cold to paint... benefits of having a dad as a painting contractor). I didn't count it as being 155 until I took the keg out of the water, flipped it over, and took a reading of the surface of the keg that was NOT submerged in water (since metal is such a good conductor of heat). I held the actually water temp at about 160 for roughly 2 hours.