Pasteurising "on the way down"
Terry Chalk
As an amateur craft cidermaker I have been hot water pasteurising after adding sugar into completely fermented cider in order to get some sweetness and carbonation.
This works and makes sense because when SG is increased by adding sugar I can determine what “primed” SG I need for whatever target volumes of C02 and “sweetness”.
However, it has occurred to me that this probably wouldn’t work by stopping “on the way down” (i.e. pasteurise at 1.005 because that represents 10g/L of “sugar”). My concern (or belief) is that at that point most of the “sugar” left is indeed the original 20% or so of non-fermentables so there isn’t much to convert into C02, and in any case what is left might not be all that sweet (i.e. acid, tannin, etc).
I base this on the idea that fully fermented cider at SG1.000 is really a mixture of alcohol at SG 0.789 and water with non-fermentables at something above SG 1.010.
If I bulk prime to the desired SG, it means that it doesn’t matter what size bottles I use, the quantity of sugar per bottle is always correct. Any “learned” thoughts out there… am I correct or off with the pixies?
