Bottling sweet carbonated cider, pasteurize or sterile filter?

[JudyP]

HI Everyone,

This is my first commercial hard cider project and I am stumped on this last piece of the puzzle. I want to produce a slightly fizzer, off dry hard cider in 22 oz. bottles.

 I have 250 gallons of fermented hard cider which I back sweetened with very sweet ice cider so it is now off dry. I plate-pad filtered this cider last week and now need to bottle it.     My plan is to:
  1. force carb in kegs
  2. sterile filter on the way to the bottling line
  3. bottle with a 6- bottle gravity filler. 

I know that I will lose some carbonation going through the sterile filter and that is OK I am looking to make just a slightly fizzy cider.

 Is this a good plan or are there other methods that I should be looking at that are better, like pasteurization instead of sterile filtering? Or using a counter pressure filler instead of a gravity filter? I  could use some advice from commerical cider makers, I am not sure what the best practice is.  Thanks in advance for your help.

[Chris Schmidt]

Hi Judy;

My two bits would be to filter the cider on its way to the keg, carbonate it, then bottle with a counter pressure filler. You'll loose all the carbonation with a gravity filler. And pasteurize instead of sterile filter, otherwise you could still have contamination from the bottling, capping, bottles, etc.

[JudyP]

Hi Chris,

Thanks so much for the advice.

I am curious on why pasteurization is recommended with hard cider and why sterile filter is considered unsafe? I make sweet wine commercially and never pasteurize, only sterile filter ( as is common practice among commercial wine makers). Why is hard cider treated differently?

[Andrew Lea]

On 17/04/2014 18:04, JudyP wrote:

>
> I am curious on why pasteurization is recommended with hard cider and
> why sterile filter is considered unsafe? I make sweet wine commercially
> and never pasteurize, only sterile filter ( as is common practice among
> commercial wine makers). Why is hard cider treated differently?

Because it only has half the alcohol level of wine so the
microbiological 'hurdle' is less. It is possible to sterile filter
cider, and some people do, but the conditions and attention to detail
have to be more stringent than for wine. Exploding bottles can and do
happen!

For the amateur and small scale operator, in-bottle pasteurisation of
sweetened cider is regarded as a safer option.

Andrew

--
near Oxford, UK
Wittenham Hill Cider Portal
www.cider.org.uk

[Alexander Peckham]

Last year we contracted in a cross flow to filter some off dry cider. The cider was so slow to get through (20% of the speed of a white wine) that it was costly.   We sterilised lines and a tank and did a trial to see how stable it would be.  The winemaker (who came with the filter) was confident the blend would keep - this was his experience.  It took less than two weeks to start a new ferment.  I support Andrew's view on this.

I also suspect that cider from cider fruit is quite hard to sterile filter.   I find it hard enough with a simple plate and frame and even a DE filter can complain.  The work involved in getting lovely chewy ciders though a sterile filter is considerable.  That is why we pasteurise.

Cheers,  Alex 

[JudyP]

Thanks Alexander for the information, much appreciated!

[JudyP]

Thanks Andrew.