sweetening with Brettanomyces

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means5104

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I have made a cider with WLP670. I wanted a cider with a little bit of Brett funkyness. I love the dryness that it fermented to however my wife who is the one I made it for feels it should be sweeter. I was wondering if anyone knew of a way to back sweeten with Brett in the mix? I figure Brett can eat up Splenda so that wouldn't be an option. I know this may be the wrong place for this question. But any help would be appreciated. Also wanting to bottle and carbonate. Kegging is not an option. Would killing off the yeast with sorbates and using a neutral strain to bottle carbonate and use splenda work or would the Brett survive the sorbate? Thank you all for your time.
 
Sweetness is a funny thing, the more you have the more you need it. I stopped drinking pop for the most part as I get a headache when I drink too much, now I have a Soda Stream and only drink carbonated water with a little fruit/citrus essence and pop seems massively sweet to me now. So, my point is, you may simply encourage her to keep drinking it and develop an appreciation for non-sugary beverages.
 
Curious how to pasteurize at home?

Pasteurizing at home is very easy. Just heat your cider to ~145 F on your stove or in your brew kettle. Hold at 145 F for 30 minutes. This should denature the brettanomyces, but not boil off any ethanol (boiling point of ethanol is 173 F).

Cool your cider, and then add sugar (pre-dissolved in a small amount of boiled-then-cooled water) to taste. The brett should be dead and won't convert the new sugar.
 
??? How are you adding oxygen? If anything, you're pulling any oxygen that might be in solution out during the boil.

But yes, that is how I've seen a lot of folks do it (my self included). You pastuerize just as described and either add some sugar to just plain sweeten it or, what I do, add some frozen apple concentrate to bring the "apple flavor" back up. I use concentrate because I prefer my cider more on the "appley" side than the champagne/dried out side.
 
Is. This the practice with hoe cider makers? It seems like it would ruin a beer with oxidation

What Cape Brewing said - heating actually drives out dissolved oxygen, and CO2 for that matter...any dissolved gas.

A lot of breweries pasteurize. A lot. But since they deal with huge volumes, they utilize flash pasteurization, where the beer is subjected to a higher temperature (~165 F) for a shorter time (~30 seconds), under flowing conditions using heat exchangers. There are fully automated flash pasteurization setups that are used by many large breweries.
 

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