Question about pasteurization

[Cjacobs]

Ok everyone I have a question about pasteurization. I recently tried Pasteurizing to stop fermentation after carbonation built up in my bottles. I heated to 180 degrees and let them sit for 10 min them took them out and let them cool I did I think 10 bottles at a time. After they came back to room temp I put half in the fridge and the other half I put away for later the first half was amazing best cider I have made the second half that I tried today is way over carbonated turned to strait foam as soon as it hits your tongue and the amazing flavor has turned into something im not a fan of.

So my question is did I do something wrong with the pasteurization.

My recipe was apple juice, sugar, yeast Nutrient, pectic enzyme, and lalvin 1118 yeast

Hopefully y’all can help me I really don’t want to waste half a batch again

 

[Cjacobs]

P.s. I have read the pinned pasteurization thread but still have no idea what I did wrong

 

[Saabmike]

Im no expert in pasteurization or anything but do you guys think possibly too many bottles at once? so you hit 180 with your boiling water and the more bottles you put in the cooler/ faster the water will cool down? so 180 degrees and im assuming your bottles were room temp-ish? im wondering if the temp dropped fast and by the end of the 10 minutes the 180 degree water was well below even 160?

i use a sous vide emersion heater and set it to 165 and leave only 4 bottles in the water each time for ~12minutes (i dont have any huge pots). The sous vide really worked well and no risk of bottle bombs!

 

[mongoose33]

The water bath isn't the important temp...the important temp is what's in the bottles. It takes time for bottles to warm up (or cool down). If you heated to 180 and put the bottles in, you cooled down your water bath. I would have doubted your bottles' internal temps reached 170 degrees in only 10 minutes, both with cooling down the water bath as well as it just takes time. Further, the cider in the bottles probably was pretty warm next to the glass, but not internally.

I'm thinking about when I do pressure canning...once the canner reaches 240 degrees, I still have to let the canned meat sit in there for...iirc...an hour at temperature. That is, it takes an hour to be sure everything is heated up to 240.

So I would not expect 10 minutes in a 180-degree water bath to get you where you want to go. Fewer bottles? Maybe. Longer time? Maybe. Something to maintain the 180 degrees? Maybe.

 

[ncbrewer]

I might be wrong, but wouldn't there be a concern about bottles bursting when heated, already having CO2 pressure?

 

[Maylar]

I might be wrong, but wouldn't there be a concern about bottles bursting when heated, already having CO2 pressure?

Umm... yes. That's a very real risk when pasteurizing this way. You need to have a reliable way to judge the level of carbonation. The internal pressure in a bottle is a direct function of temperature. You also need good bottles - some are stronger than others. And most important, you need to protect yourself and the surrounding area from any possible "accident".

I'll stick to kegging, thank you.

 

[Cjacobs]

Thank you everyone.

 

[412CiderGuy]

I’m new to pasteurization myself but when I did a test I filled one bottle with water and put a sensor from temp controller to test heat times. Definitely took longer than anticipated.

Side note, not sure your scale but I saved this post from Rev Nat a while ago. I want to try and build something similar this year.

http://reverendnatshardcider.com/news/pasteurizing-on-a-small-scale/