Easy Stove-Top Pasteurizing - With Pics

[Daze]

My question to the board is how low can the temp go and still be effective?

Pasteurizing temperatures
at 53C = 128F minimum time to kill population 56 min
at 60C = 140F minimum time to kill population 5.6 min
at 67c = 152F minimum time to kill population .56 min


Just keep in mind that is the temp of the liquid in the bottles not the water bath temp.

 

[Mitch311]

Hey Pappers,

I have looked through this thread fairly steadily looking for a reference to your Cider recipe, that you describe as not needing any aging time?

I found a recipe you linked at about page 8 or so, but am not sure if this is the recipe you refer to on page 3.

I just ask as I am planning to make my first ciders and would prefer not to wait until mid year to drink them!

Thank-you for your time and continuing dedication to this thread! It certainly was exactly the inspiration I needed to get into making my own ciders. (I don't drink beer, don't hate me!) I play in the more potent side of home brewing but have never made ready to drink drinks before!

Also, would the pressure of pasteurizing be too much for the swing arm style lids found on Grolsch Bottles? (I don't know if people outside of Australia have these?) I'd prefer to use these bottles than capped ones if they would be suitable.

Mitch

 

[Pappers_]

Hey Pappers,

I have looked through this thread fairly steadily looking for a reference to your Cider recipe, that you describe as not needing any aging time?

I found a recipe you linked at about page 8 or so, but am not sure if this is the recipe you refer to on page 3.

I just ask as I am planning to make my first ciders and would prefer not to wait until mid year to drink them!

Thank-you for your time and continuing dedication to this thread! It certainly was exactly the inspiration I needed to get into making my own ciders. (I don't drink beer, don't hate me!) I play in the more potent side of home brewing but have never made ready to drink drinks before!

Also, would the pressure of pasteurizing be too much for the swing arm style lids found on Grolsch Bottles? (I don't know if people outside of Australia have these?) I'd prefer to use these bottles than capped ones if they would be suitable.

Mitch

Hi Mitch. For the cider I carbonate and pasteurize, its ready quickly because its a simple, moderate alcohol and light cider - some people call it a draft-style cider. I just use store-bought apple juice (no preservatives), pectic enzyme, and Nottingham yeast. You can read a slightly fuller description here http://www.singingboysbrewing.com/Apple-Cider.html under the "Making Cider" heading.

It not complex in flavor or aroma, its light, got some nice apple flavor, spritzy, and best enjoyed cold.

Another option for making quick and good sparkling cider is explained here www.makinghardcider.com Its a good method for people who don't want to either keg or pasteurize their cider.

I think swing arm bottles would work fine, but I haven't used them for cider. I do use some 1 L swing arm bottles I have for beers, if I'm bringing some to a homebrew club meeting or something like that.

Cheers!

 

[Mitch311]

Hi,

Thanks for the quick reply. Looks like a solid drink. I am happy to pasteurize it seems like the most sensible and simple solution to making sweet cider. I am absolutely not a fan of chemicals in my brew! I am planning to use a apple pomegranate and cranberry juice I can get here in the supermarket. Already checked it out for preservatives etc and looks all clear!

I am aiming for a cider at approx 6-7% so I will have to add some sugar but hopefully everything will work out nicely. Now I need to try finding some of this Nottingham here in Aus.

Thanks for your quick reply!

Mitch

 

[dinnerstick]

Hey Pappers,
Also, would the pressure of pasteurizing be too much for the swing arm style lids found on Grolsch Bottles? (I don't know if people outside of Australia have these?) I'd prefer to use these bottles than capped ones if they would be suitable.

dutch beer outside australia?? is it possible? somewhere in the middle of this thread i reported that i tried pasteurizing swing top bottles, nothing tragic but when the seals got hot and the pressure got high the seals failed a bit and leaked out some gas, but in the end they still held enough pressure for carbonation. i think i used a slightly higher temp but i don't remember. good luck

 

[Mitch311]

Hehe I didn't know it was dutch beer till this afternoon. I just knew the names of the bottles because I had been given 4 of them once! Like I said I don't drink beer and know essentially nothing about it :/

Thanks for the advice!

 

[the_ginger_ninja]

Hi All,

Found this subject and hope I can be of some use.

I make soft-drinks in the UK, all carbonated. Because they're carbonated there are only two tried and tested options to create a safe product with a long shelf-life (i.e. more than 1 week): tunnel pasteurisation and water-bath pasteurisation.

I use a hot-water bath because, well, I don't own the factory which is small and couldn't accommodate one anyway. Plus it costs about 5% of a tunnel pasteuriser!

Anyway, back to the point.

We pasteurise at 71.5 degrees C with a +/- of 0.5. I.e. the temperature can fluctuate to 71 or 72 degrees. Once the hot water is up to temperature the bottles are held in the hot water for 20 minutes.

You can kill yeast at lower temperatures, but for a longer time, some bacteria are harder to kill so it's worth our while heating it higher and leaving it longer. We also make orange juice, and the recommendation was to direct heat to 85-95 C, for up to 30 seconds (at 85 C). We don't pasteurise our juice at all and leave it with a 1 week life.

The reason for the 20 minutes is so that the heat can transmit from the hugely insulating glass bottle in to the product, and that ALL of the product reaches temperature. We get probably a 0.01% explosion rate in the pasteuriser using exclusively new bottles.

When I'm testing at home I use exactly the same process - heat up water in a saucepan, bottles in, bring to temp, leave for 20 mins. Make sure you DON'T put bottles directly on to the floor of the pan - use something to lift it from the floor otherwise you'll create hot-spots which I promise you will cause more bottles to explode. I use an old wire rack , or sometimes a tea-towel could do the job I suppose. Just make sure it's folded a few times.

Where I do this they also make cider, and they do exactly the same, but at 69degrees C.

Do things this way and you'll have a shelf-life of up to 2 years.

Jonathan

 

[dinnerstick]

very interesting! in the 70ish deg bath is there a constant (indirect) heat source to maintain the temp, like a laboratory water bath? thanks for the info

 

[Brewskii]

Didn't read this thread ( sorry) but I used to work somewhere that needed to pasteurize small test batches of beer very infrequently. They used a recording temperature device to measure pasteurization units in their industrial pasteurizers and the ran one through their dishwasher in the lab and were able to qualify it for pasteurization.
Just a thought... Don't know if anyone has tried it.

 

[swolfe]

Didn't read this thread ( sorry) but I used to work somewhere that needed to pasteurize small test batches of beer very infrequently. They used a recording temperature device to measure pasteurization units in their industrial pasteurizers and the ran one through their dishwasher in the lab and were able to qualify it for pasteurization.
Just a thought... Don't know if anyone has tried it.

I would totally do this, I just don't have a dishwasher.

 

[the_ginger_ninja]

very interesting! in the 70ish deg bath is there a constant (indirect) heat source to maintain the temp, like a laboratory water bath? thanks for the info

It is basically three 2.5Kw immersion heaters covering the base of the vat. On top of this is a mesh grill that bottles sit on. Cover bottles to 2" from the tops (ish) with water and turn machine on. Does about 180 330ml bottles per batch.

I use this:
http://www.vigoltd.com/in-bottle-pasteuriser.php


This kit costs £3,500!!!!! Plus £800/900 for the legs!!!! + VAT!!!!

When I'm doing it at home I bought a £6 temperature probe, set it to beep at a max temp and min temp then heat the water without bottles. You can heat it 10 much higher than 72 at this point because as soon as you put bottles in then the temp plummets. Once you re-reached temp then turn gas down to 'simmer', come back in 5 and check. The min/max alarms should warn you if you go over the required temp.

 

[the_ginger_ninja]

Oh, as long as the caps are on and sealed there should be zero loss of carbonation. The CO2 will re-saturate in to the liquid.

 

[Mitch311]

Ok,

So quick question if you pasteurise will it effect a brews ability to age?

I am going to put down 3 ciders in a week or two. 1 simple quick one like Pappers, 1 using pure juice that is apple, pomegranate and cranberry which I hope will not need a secondary either and a blueberry/apple, using blueberry juice and blended/crushed blueberries. But the two flavoured ones are going to be about 6-7% and I think they will need a tad of aging to smooth them out?

Thanks!

 

[the_ginger_ninja]

Ok,

So quick question if you pasteurise will it effect a brews ability to age?

I am going to put down 3 ciders in a week or two. 1 simple quick one like Pappers, 1 using pure juice that is apple, pomegranate and cranberry which I hope will not need a secondary either and a blueberry/apple, using blueberry juice and blended/crushed blueberries. But the two flavoured ones are going to be about 6-7% and I think they will need a tad of aging to smooth them out?

Thanks!

Ah, so now I'm stepping outside of my comfort zone! I'm not a drinker, or a brewer, so I couldn't comment I'm afraid so I would have to defer to someone else on that front!

 

[dinnerstick]

Ok,

So quick question if you pasteurise will it effect a brews ability to age?

I am going to put down 3 ciders in a week or two. 1 simple quick one like Pappers, 1 using pure juice that is apple, pomegranate and cranberry which I hope will not need a secondary either and a blueberry/apple, using blueberry juice and blended/crushed blueberries. But the two flavoured ones are going to be about 6-7% and I think they will need a tad of aging to smooth them out?

Thanks!

they might not require a lot of age, they are not super high alcohol, and sugar can to some extent paper over the harshness of young ciders. (i assume you are bottling them sweet or why else would you be pasteurizing...) that's not to say they won't benefit from a few months in the bottle, just that it shouldn't stop you sampling a few early on

 

[user 73497]

I'll add my tale of woe.. Initially tried 8 bottles in 190º water for 10 minutes. Only one survived, the rest shot the caps off hard enough to fold over the edge on the lid of the pot (tempered glass survived). It was exciting. Even several minutes after removing the cider in the blown bottles read 160º.

I highly recommend running a test batch with opened bottles and a thermometer to know the time/temp it will take for your "system" to get up to pateurization temps without going too high (which can be both dangerous and deleterious to the flavor). Mine was force carbed @35º and about 12-15lbs. 8 12oz bottles to 2.5-3 gallons of 190º water... way too hot for a 10 minute soak at that ratio.

I poured the blown bottles into a soda bottle and will force carb with a carb cap -doubt they'll be good but I can see what the high heat/HSA did to them.

Cheers, Werbi

 

[user 73497]

I ended up trying a second batch with a bath temp of 170º after testing open bottles at 175 which heated the contents to over 150º and had only one cap fail out of eight bottles. I like the idea, and have a sweet mead I'd like to heat stabilize so I am going to use my new oven thermometer to measure the average time for the contents of an open bottle (foil cap?) to hit 140º at a set temp. I will then try a two bath system so I don't overheat the bottles during the rest. I will fill a cooler with 140-150º water for the rest and transfer the bottles from the heating bath to the holding bath.

I did do a side-by-side taste test with a homebrewing friend and we did not notice a difference in the ciders from the cooking (we tried and thought we tasted differences but honestly would not be able to tell them apart in a blind tasting with any consistency). I also pasteurized a bottle of beer for comparison and we didn't notice a difference in quality either. -we were shocked. Will have to pasteurize a few bottles and age them alongside unpasteurized beer to see if the pasteurization improves their shelf life or yields any difference long term.

 

[LeBreton]

Mine was force carbed @35º and about 12-15lbs. 8 12oz bottles to 2.5-3 gallons of 190º water... way too hot for a 10 minute soak at that ratio.i

Wait, if you have a kegging system, why are you pasteurizing closed and pressurized cider at all?

 

[BelMamba]

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 method is more than twice as fast, reduces initial thermal stress on the bottles by 20% and should reach at least the same temperature (if not higher) in-bottle. Disadvantage: you need one more piece of equipment - a rack that keeps the bottles away from the bottom of the boiling pot

Before starting: I use this method for cider that I stop whenever I feel it tastes best with no regards on how active the fermentation still is. My personal preference in cider is 100% apple juice cider that uses it's own sugars to sweeten to taste even if that means a little less alcohol ... but it works with fermenting through and back-sweetening just fine. I did some gallon batches where I fermented through and back-sweetened with dextrose far beyond the typical priming amount.

Method: The basic method is the same than suggested by Pappers but with three major differences:
- The heat stays on when bottles are in
- The initial temperature is lower
- A rack needs to be inserted into the pot so that the bottles are not touching the bottom of the pot. In my case they are about 3/4" from the bottom so I have a good water layer in between bottles and heater. I have not tried what happens without a rack but others have had exploding bottles by thermal stress and my gut feel told me not to try this without!

So you basically heat the water to 170F instead of 190F, insert the bottles (I did 7-8 per batch) and keep the heat on so that the water reaches 170-175F at the end of the 10 minutes you keep the bottles in (as in the original). This allows you to take out the bottles and put in the next batch immediately (this is where the time saving comes in, with Papper's original method and our equipment, it took us 15 minutes to have the water back at 190 between batches .... so the whole process is 60% faster for us)

Why should it work? The true measure of how reliable the pasteurization has succeeded is the temperature in the bottle. This temperature depends on how much heat the water has transferred into the bottle. Heat transfer is proportional to the temperature difference. So with the lower temperature at the beginning (for my method), there is less heat flowing into the bottle. Assuming cellar temperature for the bottles (60F), Papper's original method has a delta of 130F while mine has 110F, roughly 20+% less transfer (and less thermal stress on the bottle). However, with Papper's method (switching off the flame), the water will cool to 155-160F (by inserting the bottles) and stay there while my method recovers temperature to 170-175F. If we assume that the bottles are pretty close to this temperature for the second half of the bath - let's say 130F or so, the deltas (and thus the temperature transfer) towards the end are 40-45F vs. 25-30F, i.e. ~35% higher for my method. In other words, as closer the bottles come to the water temperature, as higher is the effect of the 10-15F more that my method produces at the end. So I think it is rather reasonable to assume that the in-bottle temperature after my method is at least as high as in Papper's method and I have had no bottle bomb in 3 batches even though I clearly had sugars left.

However, I did not measure the in-bottle temperature so all I can say is that it worked well for me and my understanding of thermodynamics (I am a physicist) makes me sleep soundly using this method - but obvious disclaimer: no guarantees since there are still many variables in play (original temperature of the cider, size of the pot / water amount, heating mechanism - i.e. pot bottom temperature ...)

Good luck, thank's Papper's for your detailed write up, I would never have started with pasteurized cider without your encouraging posts and details and it is a golden bullet for the natural style of cider I prefer. I hope this contributes a little bit back to the community ...

 

[smyrnaquince]

Could you take one bottle that you just removed from the water bath, open it, and check the temperature of the cider that is in it? I'm really curious about what the internal temperature got up to.

Also, people might want to read this thread about a similar method. Just trying to give credit to those who have worked this problem before.

 

[BelMamba]

Could you take one bottle that you just removed from the water bath, open it, and check the temperature of the cider that is in it? I'm really curious about what the internal temperature got up to.

Also, people might want to read this thread about a similar method. Just trying to give credit to those who have worked this problem before.

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 and still succeed. I am just careful because there is the effect of cooling the water and my home stove top is not the fastest in replenishing heat with such a big and thin-walled pot ...

 

[Daze]

Could you take one bottle that you just removed from the water bath, open it, and check the temperature of the cider that is in it? I'm really curious about what the internal temperature got up to.

NOOOOOO!!!!!! That is like taking the cap of the radiator of a hot engine. Hot liquid will erupt from the bottle. if you are worried about internal temps you would need to bottle a thermometer in water in a clear bottle so you could get a reading through the bottle. Heat transfer is quick so the water bath temp after 10 minutes should be fairly close to the internal bottle temp.

 

[Daze]

Reading this thread, one could even go a little lower with the temperature and still succeed. I am just careful because there is the effect of cooling the water and my home stove top is not the fastest in replenishing heat with such a big and thin-walled pot ...

I took Pappers brilliant technique and modified it to work faster, do more bottles at once, reduce thermal shock and allow you to heat up the stock pot faster between batches. Take a look at this thread it outlines my modified process.

Another way to bottle pasturize

 

[BelMamba]

I took Pappers brilliant technique and modified it to work faster, do more bottles at once, reduce thermal shock and allow you to heat up the stock pot faster. Take a look at this thread it outlines my modified process.

Another way to bottle pasturize

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 question: do you switch off the heat or keep it on? If you switch it off, you will still spend some time to re-heat the water between batches, or? But of course, since the target is no longer 190 that is much faster than with Pappers original ... makes sense.

Good luck, thanks for sharing your information ...

 

[BelMamba]

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.

This drink is actually bottle pasteurized when the fermentation is in full swing (but still only 0.25% alcohol is produced) and much more agressive than cider fermentation (since it is beer with a gravity of 1.056) and is thus very challenging.

Fermentation is so fast at that stage that there is no way to hit the perfect point between to little carbonation and exploding bottles for a full batch. However, after half a dozen explosions under various circumstances (I am not reckless, I never had a single cider bottle explode on me ...), the trick that had my whole last batch successfully pasteurized was:
- let them ferment to the upper end of the desired pressure range
- open the bottles 5-10 minutes to release pressure and capping them right before they enter the water
- keep the water actively between 160 and 170 (never exceeding 170, dropping to 150-155 when inserting the bottles).

This may sound counter-intuitive to first have all the pressure develop and then let it escape but it takes time for the CO2 that is in the beer to escape after opening so there is very nice carbonisation left even after 10 minutes of being open and the overall process is much more controlled.

You might never do something crazy like this with cider which is so much slower than beer, but if you missed the right point and are to high in carbonisation, opening bottles for 5-10 minutes and closing them again before heating will still leave a nice level of bubbles ....

 

[Daze]

do you switch off the heat or keep it on? If you switch it off, you will still spend some time to re-heat the water between batches, or? But of course, since the target is no longer 190 that is much faster than with Pappers original ... makes sense.

Good luck, thanks for sharing your information ...

yes I turn the heat off, but as you said raising the heat 10º from 165 to 175 only takes a few minutes.

the trick that had my whole last batch successfully pasteurized was:
- let them ferment to the upper end of the desired pressure range
- open the bottles 5-10 minutes to release pressure and capping them right before they enter the water
- keep the water actively between 160 and 170 (never exceeding 170, dropping to 150-155 when inserting the bottles).

This may sound counter-intuitive to first have all the pressure develop and then let it escape but it takes time for the CO2 that is in the beer to escape after opening so there is very nice carbonization left even after 10 minutes of being open and the overall process is much more controlled.

The reason it seams counter intuitive is people don't think of CO2 as something that can be in solution they think of it as gas alone that should be bubbles or in the open air space at the top of the bottle, but in reality it saturates the liquid so you can pop the top with out letting out all the pressure. The last bottle that the pop open (the one that finally has enough co2) before pasteurizing ends up with almost as much carbonation a the ones I don't open. As I have said before it is like a bottle of pop, if you open it, take a drink and then recap it there will be plenty of co2 in it the next time you take a drink. That is the whole reason there is a need to degas in brewing is some times it can be down right hard to get all the co2 out

 

[brewmaster89]

Great info! I will be doing this to my cider when it is ready.

 

[dmulligan]

I bottled my back sweetened cider two days ago. How long should I wait before popping the first cap? The cider had aged for months so I don't believe that the yeast will wake up that quickly. Is that a bad assumption?

Also I have two batches. I was a little short of dextrose and used a little bit of table sugar with one of my carboys. Should I check that batch separately? Both were back sweetened to about 1.015.

Also will different sized bottles carbonate at different rates? My guess is no but I want to be sure. I have many Grolsh 450mL bottles and some 1L flip top bottles.

 

[Daze]

I would check the different batches separately. As to the time it took 10 days for my last batch but I started checking after 2 days and then every other day. Temp plays a big part had I not had my bottles in the basement where it was cold they probably would have carbonated faster. I don't think bottle size will matter but I am not 100% sure on that.

 

[dmulligan]

I shared a 2 day old bottle with the folks that helped me juice the apples and it was very very lightly carbonated. I suppose that it will not take too long and I should keep popping caps at least every two days for the next little while.

Thanks,
David