Dishwasher Pasteurizing?

[guitarzan_1971]

I have recently read that if your dishwasher hits a high enough temperature it can be used to pasteurize already carbed bottles. Anyone tried it? I'm thinking any water heater can be turned up high enough. My dishwasher has a steam setting, high heat setting, and even a sanitize setting.

From what I have read hitting 160 degrees even for only a couple of minutes kills all yeast stopping fermentation. The reason I ask is that I'd like to bottle my ginger beer with just the right amount of sweetness, not completely dry, and prevent bottle bombs by throwing them into the dishwasher on high heat all at once instead of heating a few at a time on the stove.

I'm going to run a test shortly I will fill and cap one bottle and run it with my dishes. I will then put a balloon on the end of the bottle and see if fermentation continues. My current batch is only one week into fermentation but I will let you know how it works.

If anyone has any thoughts please post!

 

[phug]

It has been tried and works for some. Not all dishwashers hit a high enough temp for long enough. Yours might.



Sent from my iPhone using Home Brew

 

[cheyneco]

Worked on mine. I think my water heater is set around 115 degrees F.

I have read not to use the heat dry setting. I'm not sure why, but when I did mine I had the heat dry setting on and had one bottle explode.

I turned it back on to a quick rinse cycle and it was super easy cleanup after that.

 

[WVMJ]

I have seen beekeepers cut a hot water heater in half and use it to warm honey, I dont see why you couldnt heat up water in it to pasturize bottles, but do they even go that high anymore with all the safety controls on them anymore?

WVMJ

 

[cheyneco]

I have seen beekeepers cut a hot water heater in half and use it to warm honey, I dont see why you couldnt heat up water in it to pasturize bottles, but do they even go that high anymore with all the safety controls on them anymore?

WVMJ

The dishwasher must be run on high temp wash...it should have a heating coil in the bottom that heats the water up beyond the hot water that is being fed into it.

 

[crabbyapple]

I've tried this in three different dishwashers, all with a "sanitary" or "high temperature" option. One failed to pasteurize the bottles, I put them in the garage and ended up with a sticky mess after two of the bottles burst one night. The second seemed to work ok, but I also kept those in a fridge and gave a bunch away, so they went pretty quick. The third washer probably would have worked, but I had THREE bottles explode during the process and stopped because it was a huge PITA to pick bits of broken glass out of the bottom.

I stick primarily to the stovetop method described in this forum, and have used it with great success. Have only lost two bottles in dozens of batches, and both of those were the big bomber size bottles and from the same batch, so maybe overcarbed going into the process.

However, my last two batches I got a little "creative" and used the plate chiller from my beer setup in "reverse." Pumped hot water and cold cider through it directly into a keg. The water went in boiling and the cider that I sampled came out at about 170. I was able to pump 10 gallons through in about 15 minutes. Worked great, and I may stick to this method for ciders that aren't backsweetened too much (I backsweeten pretty much everything to varying degrees). For the sweet stuff (like the caramel apple cider on this forum, which I make a couple times a year), I'm concerned about creating sticky residue on the inside of the chiller. Though you could probably clean it out fairly easily with a hot PBW rinse, I don't want to create more problems them I'm solving.