Recent content by BelMamba

Thanks for sharing. Sounds like you had some fun :) .... a few comments: - The real test whether your method works is whether you actually killed the yeast ... so I would celebrate your method only after another month or so and I keep my fingers crossed that it will work! - While you are...

I just tried to transfer my experience with cider pasteurization to another drink and learned some more tricks. The drink is Malzbier - a traditional non-alcoholic (<0.5%) sweet malty beer from Germany that my family loves (also known as Malta in Latin America and Africa) - see my thread here...

If I get this right, the main difference is that you pre-heat the bottles in a second pot and thus you can start at lower temperatures (<175) without that much of a temperature drop and even put as much bottles in there as you can fit (10-12). That makes a lot of sense but I do have one...

I have not tried Malta but it sounds very similar. I know that "Malzbier" does exist in South America - especially Brasil - but some of it seems to have enough alcohol to not be a kid's drink anymore (2% or more). However, Malta seems to be non-alcoholic as well.

Hi everyone, for a while now, I have participated on this site due to the fact that I love making (and drinking) hard cider. I have never brewed beer since I am quite happy with some of the commercially available options in my area (Boston) - even though I am a German and therefore supposed...

Hi, I will do that temperature check and let you know. The thread you mention cites from a paper that I read before I tried my modifications, that research is very informative. I did not see the surrounding thread though. Reading this thread, one could even go a little lower with the temperature...

Hi everyone, as indicated a few times before, I did investigate a modification to Papper's method and I used this modified method now for 3 6-gallon batches (and a few smaller ones) without any bottle bombs so I feel save to present it as a "standard recipe". Motivation: This modified...

Important question: did you just put the bottles into the pot without anything keeping the from touching the bottom? I successfully did a batch two weeks ago where I heated the water to 170 and leave the heat on for the full 10 minutes but I bought an insert that keeps the bottles from...

I have used Pepper's method and don't have a single bomb among the 300 bottles I have already done (if you don't count the two bottles that bombed while pasteurizing them), but there is a BUT. Pepper does not exactly describe the size of the pot relative to the bottles and that has quite an...

You have to a bit careful with variations on the method: I think most bottle pasteurization approaches go back to research done at Cornell (abstract) which basically says even 5 minutes in 74 C water (= 165 F) is enough to pasteurize. However, in absence of an experimental set-up description...

Hi, after three batches of following Pappers directions but pasteurizing with active fermentation, I thought I'll collect some notes on his method: - Pappers recommends switching off the heat under the bottles before inserting them. This means that the cold bottles will lower the...

I have them stored at basement temperature (65F or so) for the last 4 weeks after pasteurization and no bottle exploded and the carbonation did not increase over the 4 weeks ... in other words, the bottle pasteurization following Pappers method seems to stop all activity and cold storage is not...

Don't worry to much. Even though I posted before that I got into trouble by pasteurizing during active fermentation, these problems turned out to be related to the bottles I used in combination with the capper. I have done two more 5 gallon batches that I stopped mid-fermentation at about...

Thanks again for your input, I did find one thing out: Even though the Corona bottles have no screw-top, people have problems with some of them (esp. the C. Light ones) when using a wing capper since the second bulge at the bottle top (which the wing capper uses as leverage) is much closer to...

Hmm, I am still wondering whether blowing air at the rim / popping the crown is a standard mode of failure or an indication of bad capping (bottles or capper - I used old Corona bottles and a cheap red capper). The carbonation was extremely low so if the pressure is to high even for that low...