Waited about 24 hours too long to Pasteurize

[acemannw]

I had a nice 4 Gallon batch of Cider going. It started out at 1.0700 and ended up at 1.000 flat. After a couple of weeks in secondary I poured it into my bottling bucket.

I added another gallon of regular fresh cider, and a Can of Frozen juice concentrate. I bottled it up in some plastic Tonic and Pepsi bottle, 20 beer bottles, and some really nice 1 liter swing top bottles. Then I started waiting. I had the Pepsi bottles as test bottles to see where the pressure was. I opened one of the Pepsi bottle Friday night and it had almost no carbonation.

Fast forward to Sunday Morning and the plastic bottles were rock hard. I had a lot going on on Sunday so I didn't get a chance to Pasteurize them. When I checked on them Monday night I had lost two of the 1 liter swing top bottles.

I decided that the safest way to Pasteurize would be in the dish washer. I lost the caps off of two more beer bottles and one more liter bottle in the dish washer! I am a little bummed out now about the Cider I lost. I think I should have moved everything to cold storage yesterday morning that would have at least cooled down the cider and kept the Yeast from doing their thing.

 

[AidanSavage]

Yep. Carbing can sneak up fast. In a situation like that, another option to give thought to was breaking seals to bleed out the pressure in all the bottles, then retry the carbing. Moving to cold storage may not have slowed it quickly, as it seems like it'd be as quick as pasteurizing in the oven

 

[MindenMan]

Be glad you used swing tops, I didn't and my cider blew glass shards all inside the dishwasher. I can still hear them moving around almost a year later.

 

[acemannw]

Luckily the bottles cracked pretty clean when the Dishwasher was in the cool down phase. I did release the pressure in the swing top bottles hoping to keep them from shattering while in the dishwasher.