Flash Pasteurizing?

A local Orchard of mine makes their cider non-pasteurized or you get it Flash Pasteurized. They said they dump the cider into heat for like 5-6 seconds and take it out. I've read that people recommend non-pasteurized cider, but does this FLASH version of pasteurization make any difference to boiling the cider?

So nobody has any info on whether or not Flash pasteurization has the same draw backs as regular pasteurization or if its basically the same thing? I local orchard here either gives out unpasteurized or flash pasteurized ciders and I'm not sure what to get... Thanks!

Unpasteurized if you want to take the slight risk of wild yeast going off. Some people here I know prefer unpasteurized.

Pasteurized has (ideally) no wild yeast, and what I normally use.

I have noticed no difference in taste.

Ask them for a taste of each - in my experience flash pasteurized has a bit of a cooked taste. UV pasteurization is harder to taste the difference. Either method will set the pectin, which is why I prefer unpasteurized. YMMV

Thanks for your input!

CvilleKevin said:

Ask them for a taste of each - in my experience flash pasteurized has a bit of a cooked taste. UV pasteurization is harder to taste the difference. Either method will set the pectin, which is why I prefer unpasteurized. YMMV

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UV pasteurization will set the pectin? Really? The pectin doesn't get heated, so why would the pectin be affected?

UV pasteurization will set the pectin? Really? The pectin doesn't get heated, so why would the pectin be affected?

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Good question. I'm not sure what it is about the UV that sets the pectin, but it makes a difference. Four years ago I did several batches where I would get a couple of carboys of UV pasteurized juice and a couple unpasteurized in order to see what the difference was. It was the exact same juice. The only difference was whether it was run through the UV. The UV had no effect on the taste that I could tell, but those carboys did not clear nearly as well when I crashed them.

UV has a lot of energy, may not heat cider a lot but will definitely affect the chemistry.
UV sterilisation is only good for clear liquids like water, not very good for killing yeast in cider.

I got some juice from the press a couple days ago and I got a mix of unpasteurized and UV pasteurized so I could experiment with some different clarifiers on the pasteurized stuff. Again, I could not tell the difference in taste, but one thing that I didnt notice before was that the UV pasteurized juice was much warmer than the unpasteurized. The press operator told me that the UV increases the temp by about 25F. So yeah, thats a good bit of energy to heat the juice up this much with a light source.

The reason for the UV pasteurization is to kill e-coli. However this is only a problem with fresh juice - the alcohol will kill any e-coli during the fermentation. Im fairly sure that the UV also knocks out most, if not all of the wild yeast as well, because if I get an extra gallon or two of unpasteurized juice, it will start fermenting in the fridge if I dont drink it in about a week. When I used to get UV pasteurized juice, it never fermented in the fridge, even after several weeks.