Pasteurizing plastic bottles

I have new 1L plastic bottles into which I am going to put my cider next week. Can I pasteurize them in the dishwasher? Will the plastic hold up OK and can they take the temperature/pressure if I bottle-condition the cider after they are firm to the touch?
Thanks

I tried a bright idea of using the hot water from the hot water fixture on our sink - the type that produces very hot water for making tea or coffe by the cup. The result is the side of the bottle that the hot water hit shrank and shriveled, and it did that almost immediately.

Based on that experience, I wouldn't try again using hot water, or enough heat to make water steam profusely on those plastic soda bottles. In my case, the bottle was empty, but I would expect the bottle to possibly develop holes if it had something in it, or if left exposed to the heat long enough to pasteurize the contents.

no-go.

They don't take heat and pressure as well as glass.

As an aside, the reason you've seen it shrivel is because of both the heat and pressure differential compared to the surrounding plastic.

Walking_Target said:

no-go.

They don't take heat and pressure as well as glass.

As an aside, the reason you've seen it shrivel is because of both the heat and pressure differential compared to the surrounding plastic.

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It was empty at the time . The "Bright idea" was one I had when I was just trying to clean it.

yeah, heat and pressure. the inside of the bottle is cold and the surrounding plastic is rigid.

you introduce something that turns it elastic, and the inside of the bottle (with no pressure to push out against the supplied heat source) will shrivel in the direction of the relatively 'cold air'. Also, it will naturally shrivel as PET bottles are blow-formed from smaller blanks, so introducing heat will make them want to go back to that unstressed state

try it with a pressurized soda/water bottle- or don't actually, i tried it, the plastic goes soft, the pressure pushes out, you get a weird puffy distended comic book bottle

OK, so it looks like heat pasteurization is a bad idea- how do I stop the fermentation in these bottles when bottle conditioning them?

leroy said:

OK, so it looks like heat pasteurization is a bad idea- how do I stop the fermentation in these bottles when bottle conditioning them?

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I guess you could try chilling the bottles to stop the yeast, but that is not entirely effective sometimes.

Two other options: follow the method at www.makinghardcider.com or make still cider.

I use plastic 2 liter bottles to bottle and carb my apfelwein. I do let it ferment dry and then just add enough sugar to carb it. The yeasties run out of sugar and they are always carbed to perfection. Of course if you want the finished product sweet, this process won't work for you unless you back sweeten with a non-fermentable sweetener.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions, I will backsweeten with Splenda or similar and try to add just enough sugar to create the carbination.

I tried it with a cider filled and naturally carbonated coca cola bottle. It was a fail.