Pasteurize or not

[jimmy1950]

I want to make cider to keg in 18 lts kegs, i was thinking of making 13 and 1/2 lts at 10 % then when it finished adding 4and 1/2 lts of apple juice to sweeten it and bring it to about 7% . I have a Brewzilla can i put the 13and 1/2 lts in it and use it to pasteurize it then add the 4and 1/2 lts to it in the keg so the yeast will be died . If this would work what temperature do i need to take it up to and how long to keep it at that temperature for.
Many thanks for any help you can give me if you think this is good or bad

 

[lumpher]

The problem with pasteurizing alcohol in a brewing system is it pasteurizes at about the same temp alcohol starts boiling off. Do you have Campden tablets or Potassium Metabisulfite powder? If so, I'd use that instead. I just toss in 1 Campden tablet per gallon and let it sit a few days.

 

[jimmy1950]

Hi many thanks for your quick reply i think i will give the campden tablets ago
Thanks again

 

[Rish]

Hey, @jimmy1950. Here is a chart showing temp/time schedules for pasteurization. If you're able to hold it at 145°F for 30 minutes, that'll do it below where you start losing ethanol. Good luck!

https://www.idfa.org/pasteurization

 

[jimmy1950]

Hi Rish thanks for that i will give it a try
thanks again

 

[Miraculix]

Pasteurisation in the bottle can be done, did this myself quite often. Pasteurisation before bottling or kegging is not a good idea as you will add microorganisms somewhere down the road after it cooled down. These will then take care of the remaining sugars and ruin your drink or create bottle bombs.

 

[beren]

You shouldn't need to hold the temp that long, you're not killing salmonella. You'll notice the USDA has longer times for chicken and far shorter times for beef/pork A Practical Guide to Sous Vide Cooking
12min once the bottles hit temp should be more than enough.

https://www.fsis.usda.gov/sites/default/files/media_file/2021-12/Appendix-A.pdf
If you have a sous vide cooker it works perfectly to hold temps. I pasteurized a keg in a 5 gal bucket for a couple hours, shaking every so often to get the temps even.

 

[Chalkyt]

I am a bit late replying, however I bottle pasteurise. Of course kegs are a bit bigger. A measure of pasteurisation is a Pasteurisation Unit (PU). The conventional target for Cider is 50PUs although there is a strong school of thought that anything over 30 PUs is enough for cider.

Now for the arithmetic... holding the cider at 60C for 1 minute will generate 1PU. but all is not lost as the number of PUs generated increases exponentially with temperature. Briefly, 60C for 1 minute = 1PU, 61C for 1 minute =1.4PUs, 62C for 1 minute =1.9PUs, 63C for 1 minute = 2.7PUs, 65c for 1 minute = 3.8PUs, 65C for 1 minute = 5.2PUs etc. So roughly, 65C for 10 minutes will give the same level of pasteurisation as 60C for 50 minutes.

Obviously heating a 20L keg will take longer than heating a bottle, but I guess it could be done with a big enough waterbath. I find with heating bottles in a 65C waterbath takes about 10 minutes to get them up to the bath temperature, then taking them out takes a similar time for them to cool down to below 60C. As anything over 60C results in PUs, this process generates around 50PUs during the heat up and cool down time. There is a post by Bembel (May 11, 2016) that goes into this, or you can search Google for HW del Veccio for the background research. Also have a look at Pappers' post at the top of the forum.

Hope this helps.