sneaking tastes

[AJCider]

I have another question for this lovely forum regarding sneaking tastes and sanitizing! How do you sneak your tastes of the ciders? When the airlock comes off, does it have to be re-cleaned and sanitized again or do you just lay it to the side, take out the bit for the taste and put it right back on?

And then another unrelated question, now that I'm coming to the end of some of the shorter recipes I tried out (leaving the edwort in for a couple months per his advice but I have some other ones going that I want to finish up sooner).

I have read about pasteurizing and cold crashing - are these methods 'interchangeable' or is one preferred over the other?

I like carbed drinks, so I definitely want to make carbs and I read that the best way to do this is add priming sugar, then bottle, and put one bottle as a plastic so you can squeeze it until it is firm. After this I have seen some folks say to just throw it in the fridge, and others say to put it in a pot (or even a cooler with the hot waters).

I guess what I want to know is whether the fridge method is going to be ok, because the heating method seems a little daunting right now and I have a tiny electric stove that I'm not sure could even boil a pot of water big enough to pasteurize.

Thoughts? Advice? Thanks!

 

[Brann_mac_Finnchad]

When I taste, it's when I've pulled some off for a hydrometer sample or racked. I've almost never sanitized the carboy bung when doing this, since your booze is not supposed to touch it, and not noticed any issues (others may differ).

For your second question, no--they are not (quite) interchangeable. Cold crashing or refrigerating does not kill the yeast, but slows it significantly (lager yeasts will continue fermenting just fine in those temperatures) and allows clearing faster. "Cold crashing" after bottle carbing is fine...but you had better keep those bottles cold, or fermentation will start up again and you'll be subject to bottle bombs.
Pasteurization kills the yeast completely, so that there is nothing to ferment whatever sugars are left. Read the sticky on bottle pasteurizing for more.

Of course, if you are carbing a dry cider, you should be able to get by without either method, since after the calculated amount of sugar is eaten and converted to CO2 there will not be any sugars left to eat.

 

[Pickled_Pepper]

I always clean and sanitize the entire bung and airlock when transferring to secondary, but when I just pull a sample, I just dip the bung into sanitizer before replacing. You have to sanitize the wine thief to pull the sample so it's already mixed up and right there.

I know it's a little extra step, but I always feel that it you are going to spend the money on 5-6 gallons of juice, why skimp on sanitation? Just my humble opinion of course.

 

[HopSong]

I always have one of those GARDEN SPRAYERS full of StarSan.. That is some awesome stuff. Also like Iodophor.. but, it's a bit more messy.