Kegging and filtering cider questions

[BrewinSoldier]

Hey guys! I just started dabbling in cider making again. To date, I have only done two batches. The first one was just a one gallon jug of TreeTop AJ from Costco that I emptied some out of, added some sugar, and pitched S-04 yeast. It came out OK but nothing like store bought ciders (such as Angry orchard,etc).

A few months ago, now that I have all this fancy temp controlled equipment, I decided to try out the Brewers Best Cider house kit. It came out OK but I definitely did not like the artificial sugar after taste, probably from the fake sugar package it comes with. I only added half of the packet too.

Now I'm back to trying it out with some recipes I found on here. I do have some questions though.

Right now I have a 5 gallon batch in the fermenter that I started 7 days ago. I added 4 gallons of martinlli's gold label Apple juice, and one gallon of the Tree top 3 Apple blend Apple juice. Oxygenated and pitched a packet of US-05. OG was 1.054 and it's currently at 1.014~.

I have read and read through these forums about pasteurizing after bottling. I keg all my beer and plan to do the same with the cider. I am going to sweeten this batch per the recipe with 1# if local honey and 1 bottle of peach nectar and then force carb in the keg as per usual. I do like to bottle some after its done carbonating and give them away, or take them places. I am worried about what would happen if someone let it get warm. Does cold crashing before kegging negate me having to pasturize the bottles if I am counter filling from the carbonated keg? The other option is I just ordered a plate filter from morebeer with the 1 micron polishing filters. If I ran it through this on the way from the conical fermenter(after cold crashing a few days and dumping the trub) and into the keg, would that filter out any remaining yeast so that I could fill up a few bottles from the keg here and there without worries?

Thanks for any input.

 

[bucketnative]

Will there be enough pressure across the membrane to support flow of the cider from the fermenter through the filter? According to More Beer's site, you need 5 psig. Does your fermenter hold pressure?

 

[BrewinSoldier]

Will there be enough pressure across the membrane to support flow of the cider from the fermenter through the filter? According to More Beer's site, you need 5 psig. Does your fermenter hold pressure?

You know, I didn't even see that on the morebeer site until you mentioned it. Yeah I have a SSbrewtech 7 gallon chronical. It isn't capable of supporting that much PSI so what I'll have to do is transfer to a CO2 purged keg from the fermenter, then do a keg to keg transfer with the filter in between. Not a huge deal because I'm not making cider too often and it only one extra keg to clean. I want to dial in a really good cider recipe that is ready to drink in 3 weeks or so, not month's since my girlfriend can't drink beer. She's a cider gal though so I want to make something she can enjoy without having to go out and buy Angry orchard all the time.

 

[bembel]

It might work with a plate filter if you have .5 micron pads, but honestly. It is SOOOOOO much easier to stovetop pasteurize. I will be adding a write up later today

 

[BrewinSoldier]

It might work with a plate filter if you have .5 micron pads, but honestly. It is SOOOOOO much easier to stovetop pasteurize. I will be adding a write up later today

If you don't mind, can you post a link to it here when you get it done. I wouldn't mind having a read.

 

[BeeDeeEff]

If you don't mind, can you post a link to it here when you get it done. I wouldn't mind having a read.

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showpost.php?p=2322948&postcount=80

That's the post that goes into detail about it

 

[bembel]

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showpost.php?p=2322948&postcount=80

That's the post that goes into detail about it

Actually the instructions in that post on stove top bottle pasteurizing are not at all what I would recommend, nor would I follow the one that is a sticky at the top of the cider thread, though that has some excellent information and is a good starting point, it is not very accurate.

The post linked above does not even mention Pasteurization Units, (PU's) which are the measurement basis for how to safely pasteurize. The sticky in the cider forum does go into that later, but only if you bother to read all the follow ups and additions, it's over 100 pages.

Different ciders, be they still or sparkling, have different yeast loads and require different amounts of PUs to stabalize them.

But the net-net is that the methods outlined in both those posts are OVERKILL and therefore quite dangerous at the temperatures they recommend and pressures that result.

First, understand what a PU is. This is an EXCELLENT summary, (the formula has been simplified to remove the exponents and assumes a constant of 60, but this is good)

One pasteurization unit is the microorganism death that occurs in a product held at 60°C for 1 minute.

The number of PU's required for a particular beverage depends on several factors, such as the microrganisms it contains and even on the type of packaging. “Wild” yeasts, for example, such as occur in some types of Belgian ales, are more resistant to heat than domestic yeasts. A survey of large American breweries in 1955 found their processes averaged 14.8 PU's, with a range of 2.4 to 45.6 PU's.

The success of pasteurization (that is, what percentage of the microrganisms are killed) is affected by both temperature and by the length of time for which the product is held at that temperature. It is a tradeoff: high temperatures for short times or lower temperatures for longer times. Unfortunately, higher temperatures tend to affect the taste of the beverage.
The total number of PU's for a particular pasteurization processs for beer can be estimated from²:

PU = t × 1.393(T − 60)

where T is the temperature in degrees Celsius, and
t is the time in minutes at which the beer is held at that temperature.
In reality, of course, the beverage does not instantaneously go to the desired temperature, nor does it cool down instantaneously.

OK, so where do we go now?

Basically, with a semi-sweet cider that still has a lot of yeast in suspension the rule of thumb in ciderville (nod to Ria) is 50 PUs. My ciders stabalize at 25 PUs since they are dry ( 1.001-002 ) when I start. So 50 is overkill for me.

Either way, to get 50 PUs you don't need a water bath at 190F for 10 min. That would get you over 1500 PUs, which would kill a cow

PUs basically start at 140F ( 60C) and you can get 50 PUs without ever going above 65F (149F) and do so in under 15 minutes total time.

Why is this important? Well, personally, I'd rather not screw around with 190F water and pressurized bottles when I can do the same with 149F water, get my point?

Also, its pointless to even discuss PUs without having a way to monitor the temp INSIDE each bottle, and that's just a #3 stopper and a $15 digital thermometer away.

So, in a nutshell

Get a thermometer that you can stick through a #3 cork, the DOT by Themoworks is perfect for this, http://www.thermoworks.com/DOT but cheaper ones work

Fill an empty bottle of the same size of those that you are pasteurizing with water and stick the probe in.

Get all your bottles in the sink ( including the temp monitor one ) and get the water up as hot as it will go, 130F is standard.

get the water in your water bath for pasteurizing up to 70C, but 68C will also work ( 155-160F) I use a sous-vide immersion cooker to maintain this, but you can experiment with different stove settings,

((you can ALSO use strike water temp calculators from beer mashing to get the right temps/volumes and rather than heat in pot on the stove, dump hot water into an old cooler to do the same thing, a lot safer too, if working with carbonated bottles, as you close the cooler and if anything pops, well, its quite contained)) - A RIMS system or HERMS system hooked up to your mash tun would be a fantastic way to re-purpose that equipment for pasteurizing

So now I lower 12 bottles into my 68C water bath, and count the number of seconds at each temp, add them to an excel sheet I made to do the math, and pull them out when they are around 35 PUs, knowing the few minutes of cool down will also add to the total PUs, this is what the times / temp look like.

I used too low a strike temp in this batch so the total time was about 20 min from start to finish, I now start at 70C and my total times are closer to 12 minutes, as the initial temps climb up to 60C much faster.

The Net-Net?

You can get 50 PU's with water as low as 150F in a short amount of time, and that's a lot safer than working with near boiling temps which will increase the pressure in the bottles exponentially.

You just need to measure your PUs and not guess.

Ill post a link to the excel sheet I used I just need to go to work now

 

[Maylar]

You still have to be aware that heat makes the bottle pressure rise, and there's a limit to how much pressure a beer bottle will take. For a carbonation level of 2.6 volumes at 140°F you get about 75 psi.

The Sous Vide idea is awesome, BTW.

 

[bembel]

You still have to be aware that heat makes the bottle pressure rise, and there's a limit to how much pressure a beer bottle will take. For a carbonation level of 2.6 volumes at 140°F you get about 75 psi.

The Sous Vide idea is awesome, BTW.

Hi Maylar

Thanks for the work on the pressure, I'd like to collaborate with you and write up a really nice guide, including a temp/pressure chart

 

[Maylar]

Hi Maylar

Thanks for the work on the pressure, I'd like to collaborate with you and write up a really nice guide, including a temp/pressure chart

According to this web page:

http://www.brainlubeonline.com/GasLawsBeer.html


The formula -

P = -16.6999 - 0.0101059 T + 0.00116512 T^2 + 0.173354 T V + 4.24267 V - 0.0684226 V^2

Where P = pressure in PSI, V = volumes of CO2 and T = °F

I made a spreadsheet I'll share if you like.