Crown caps and pasteurizing

[Andy]

Hello all,

Last year I started grinding and pressing apples to make cider.  Most of them are carb'd by bottle conditioning.  Some I let go dry, but most I pasteurized at 65C using my sous vide machine to keep sweet.  I used some swing-top 750mL bottles that formerly contained flavored sparking water, and these worked perfectly and a year later seem to not have lost any pressure.  The majority of my bottles (around 150), however, were green Champagne-style 750mL bottles using plastic "stoppers" and wire cages.  These sealed perfectly and I have not had a single failure.  But these are a *serious* challenge to remove from any bottle that doesn't have really high pressure in it.  I've tried a few brands with identical results, and this year I will have about 400 bottles to seal up, so I'm considering using crown caps.

Can anyone comment on their success rate with crown caps and pasteurizing?  A large amount of my cider will end up being pasteurized, but I haven't been able to find any accounts of real experiences other than home-brewers on the internet, whose advice I have grown to question.  I'm not doing this professionally so I don't know anyone around here (southern Wisconsin) to bounce ideas off of.  Am I playing with fire here or should I be able to do this consistently?

[Keepsake Cidery]

Andy, Im not far from you, Im on Minnesota. I have some experience with pasteurizing with crown caps on a commercial level. First and foremost make sure your fill levels are right on in your bottles. If they are over filled, you will see a much higher rate of caps exploding off. From time to time there will be a cap that will let gas escape( you will hear a hiss). We have not seen this too be too big of an issue, but we feel it might lead to oxidation or, at the very least, under carbonated cider. So we keep an eye out. Make sure you have them capped well! Good luck!               nate

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[Mark Gildenhaar]

Hi Andy (et al),
I too have been grinding and pressing my own juice. I'm in my third year of home based cider making. Still small, still novice. I let my earlier batches go dry and racked then an extra time (SG< 1.000). My first couple of attempts at natural bottle carb'ing by adding priming sugar yielded poorly carbonated cider or no carbonation at all. It was suggested that I had exhausted and racked out most of or all of the yeast. So for my last batch (last year), I followed the same procedure for fermenting to dryness then back sweetened by adding apple syrup that I condensed from the same juice (frozen & stored), then I force carb'd and bottled using crown caps. The result was good and I had no issues with further fermentation in the bottles. Did I just get lucky? I am considering doing the same this year, but, as you put it Andy, "am I playing with fire?" Should I pasteurize to be sure to avoid further fermentation in the bottles? If so can anyone link me to a guide for doing this at home?

Thanks for any comments or advice.
Mark

[Andrew Lea]

It is very dangerous to bottle sweetened cider in crown cap bottles at a sugar level exceeding 10 g. / L (SG 1.003 - 5) without stabilising against refermentation in some way.  Pasteurisation is the safest way to ensure this for the amateur. 

The only exception is where you know that your nitrogenous nutrient levels are low, either by deliberate keeving or repeat racking and/or where your fruit comes from low nutrient trees. In this case it may be possible to maintain a higher SG and retain a sweet sparkling cider. In an earlier post you told us your fruit comes from old wild  roadside trees which are presumably low in nutrient. So I would suggest you have just been very lucky indeed.  But your luck may not hold, and one day you may have exploding  bottles and flying glass to deal with unless you understand and are on top of what you are doing. 

I suggest you read my book or Claude’s for more detailed explanations or look here http://www.cider.org.uk/part4.htm

Andrew 

Wittenham Hill Cider Portal
www.cider.org.uk

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[Andy]

Nate - thanks for the information!  I experimented with the fill level with the plastic stoppers, too.  Headspace is critical for sure!

[Andy]

Mark - I did a lot of experimenting with 5 gallon batches last year with various yeasts and seeing how all of this worked.  Most of my batches were only racked once or twice, but they always would restart fermentation after I added sugars.  Like Andrew says - the yeast never really seems to go completely away, I found that out in my testing, so you have to kill it.  Pasteurizing, low-temp style (65C), did not seem to impart any difference in flavor in my batches.  I started with an Anova soud-vide, which will heat 5 gallons of water in a plastic tub (a lid really helps speed things up, too), and it worked perfectly.  I logged the temperature rise in a test bottle filled with just water and then set the timer when it got up to 65C.  Zero failures, no drama, no more fermentation.  If you use corks you must wire them or they will squirt out during pasteurization.

[Richard Anderson]

We bath pasteurize our cider in crown caps with few problems. In addition to filling your bottles to the correct level,  if you carbonate, check the bottles as they are removed from the bath for “leakers”. This a string of bubbles rising the bottle. You may be able to reseat the cap with your capper. “leakers” occur when the capper is out of adjustment or as previously mentioned the bottle was over filled.

[Claude Jolicoeur]

Le lundi 13 novembre 2017 19:18:23 UTC-5, Richard a écrit :

 “leakers” occur when the capper is out of adjustment or as previously mentioned the bottle was over filled.

Also from worn out crimper head - once in a while they need to be replaced.

[Mark Gildenhaar]

Thanks Andy, I'm going to give this a try at bottling time this year.

[Mark Gildenhaar]

Thanks Richard, what is considered the "correct Level" for this procedure? I use 341ml and 500ml clear glass bottles, both designed to take crown caps. Could I bath pasteurize cans?

[Chris Schmidt]

Yes you are able to bath pasteurize cans. If you mean the standard aluminum cans, then no problems. Watch your temperatures: we find that at 65C the can tops start to expand, so we limit our bath pasteurization for cans to 63C (at 2.4Atm CO2 at 1.5C)

Chris Schmidt

Tod Creek Craft Cider

273 Prospect Lake Rd, Victoria

Visit our tasting room: Wed to Sat, 10am - 4pm

250-882-1061

Sent from my iPhone 

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[Dick Dunn]

On Mon, Nov 13, 2017 at 07:39:26PM -0800, Mark Gildenhaar wrote:
> Thanks Richard, what is considered the "correct Level" for this procedure?
> I use 341ml and 500ml clear glass bottles, both designed to take crown

> caps...

Fill to the level for which the bottles are intended. If you're going to
sell commercially, you need to be pretty close on this anyway.

First off, see if the bottles are marked with proper fill level. Some
European-origin bottles have a note around the bottom like "55 mm"--this
indicates that the correct fill level is 55 mm down from the top edge.

Barring that, figure it by weight: Put the bottle on a decent scale, tare
it, and pour in water to get the right weight, like 500 g for a 500 ml
bottle. If you're filling really manually, make yourself a reference
bottle with this fill height marked on it.

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Dick Dunn rc...@talisman.com Hygiene, Colorado USA

[Richard Anderson]

Do a trial with the stated volume and observe the fill level. We keep a trial bottle with tape at the stated volume to calibrate our filler. You may be surprised at where the fill level is.

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[Dick Dunn]

On Mon, Nov 13, 2017 at 10:12:27PM -0800, Richard Anderson wrote:
> Do a trial with the stated volume and observe the fill level...
>... You may be surprised at where the fill level is.

"What he said."
In particular, you may find that the proper fill level is lower than you
would expect. This is relevant to pasteurizing since filling to the level
that "seems right" will push the bottle pressure higher than it should be
when it's heated.

When I'm doing cider for us at home, I normally fill rather high...BUT I'm
always doing dry cider then, and I'm not pasteurizing, so it's safe for me
to try to avoid excess headspace.

When working commercially, we do as Rich suggested--check the fill level
and make a reference bottle for it. Mark showed me a trick of setting a
laser level on a little lift table he had, then raising it to just catch
the fill line on the reference bottle. After that it was easy to check the
fill on each bottle: slide it in front of the laser and see if the beam hit
the meniscus. (We didn't actually check every bottle this way! We'd
eyeball it mostly, but spot-check to prevent our visual check from
drifting.)

[dhma...@gmail.com]

Andy,

I have a home sous vide as well. What was the duration you kept the bottle at the 65C temp?

Thanks,

David

On Monday, November 13, 2017 at 5:23:20 PM UTC-5, Andy wrote:

[Andy]

David - I had to dig up my notes on it - I did 5 minutes at 65C, and my math figured that this got my about 50 PU's total.  I did lots of champagne style bottles this way and they were all sweet and bubbly.  I did about 120 bottles this way and had zero bottles fail and zero restarted fermentations.

[Mark Gildenhaar]

Andy,
I looked into the Anova sous vide pursuant to your advice back in November. I can pick one up used for a decent price on Ebay... I'd like to give this method a try come bottling time later this year.
Should I be concerned about total PU's required? How does one determine this? What factors come into play? As a home brewer am I over-thinking this... would it suffice to get the job done simply by holding at 65 degrees C for 5 min as you reported and not fuss about being precise?
Thanks,
Mark

[goet...@gmail.com]

Rookie question... what is a PU?

[Chris Schmidt]

Pasteurization Unit

See attached;

[Andrew Lea]

On 28/01/2018 17:50, goet...@gmail.com wrote:
> Rookie question... what is a PU?
>

https://groups.google.com/d/topic/cider-workshop/rJjxsXSzLl0

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Wittenham Hill Cider Portal
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www.amazon.co.uk/Craft-Cider-Making-Andrew-Lea/dp/1785000152

[Andy Quaas]

I am not the expert here, but I can repeat what I've learned from the experts and my own experiments.  You need to pay attention to PU's because it can affect the flavors in your cider, but not that closely, imho.  I am pasteurizing in order to have sweet bubbly cider so keep that in mind.  Basically what I learned was that 50 PU is plenty to kill what I had going, but my tests at 75 and 100 PU didn't seem to make any difference in flavor that I could tell.  There was very little (basically undetectable to me) difference between my unpasteurized and 50 PU bottles, so I stuck with 50 PU.  I think the problems come from people who run way too high of a temperature and for too long.  Basically, at any temp over 60C you have pasteurization going on, and you can roughly calculate how much that effect is.

I am measuring that 65C in a test bottle filled with water, too.  I just fill up a few bottles for as many batches as I have going that day so each reload gets a room-temp tester.

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[Richard Anderson]

I belong to the “its not rocket science” school of thought. You can purchase industrial grade thermometers which can be programed to signal when a given temperature is reached as well as keeping the elapsed time using a test bottle. This kit should be adequate for the small producer. Keep in mind that the 50 PU target is not based on any exact science and that PU’s are generated over curve starting at about 55 C.  Given this you will find a number of producers heat to the mid 60’s and pull the load. The test bottle is refilled with cold water and the process is  repeated for the next batch. The real test is product stability over time.

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[Andy]

My stuff has been completely inactive for a year now, FWIW.  Wine yeast, ale yeast, and one wild were all killed using 50 PU with lots of sugar left.