pasteurized vrs. unpasteurized juice

Personally, I would always prefer non-pasteurized juice. If it's cheaper, that's just gravy! Be sure of your sources though. It needs to be kept cold to prevent spontaneous fermentation and needs to have been freshly crushed, pressed and racked away from its sediment. At that point, sulfite is optional. I don't sulfite mine until the fermentation is finished.

Tom S

Unpasturized juice is always preferred. Small quantities of a material called furfural are produced when fruit juice is heated (pasteurized). Furfural is produced from sugar and has a "caramel" or "cotton candy" taste. See Amerine, "Table Wines," page 477. This is why wine made from inexpensive grape concentrate never tasters the same as wine made from fresh grapes.

lum

How do they pasturize juice? I assume they use heat but I'm wondering if any manufacturer might use radiation which might not produce the furfural.

Don S.

Good point Don. I assumed juice is pasteurized by heating. I don't think radiation is used to any extent, but I really don't know. lum

Thanks for your comments everyone. Is it safe to assume (at the very least) that pasteurized juice is less risky to work with than unpasterized? I.E. can we be sure that the natural yeasts in the unpasteurized are desirable strains.

The reasons for these questions is I've got 1/2-dozen carboys of "wine" started 10 months ago from unpasteurized juice. Four taste ok at this point but two are unpalatable. I'm rigourous with sterilization so I'm not sure what may have gone wrong unless bad juice or unfriendly organisms.

Pasteurized < milk, juice, whatever > is always heated, as the process known as pasteurization is a heating process. If you're looking for something that uses radiation, it would be labelled as something else. Normally, I would say "irradiated", but I think companies may be trying to avoid use of that term, so I can't say for sure that's what you'd have to look for.

Woods

Which is a shame really, irradation would save lots of food worldwide from spoilage. People's fear of it is completely irrational.

For some fair number of us, of course, it's not fear of irradiation at all. It's more that I want them to correct, through legislation or regulation or the sheer unadulterated genius of the market, the conditions that lead to there being shit in the meat. Using irradiation on meat, at least, is a matter of fixing the symptom, rather than the problem.

Heck, I'd also like it if meat processing workers could work at a rate such that they got to keep ALL their body parts (intact!), but that may be too much to ask. :-)

Dave, former director of the University of Illinois Radioisotope Lab

**************************************************************************** Dave Breeden snipped-for-privacy@lightlink.com

I'm not so sure about that last part. Although irradiation seems to render food (and mail, for that matter) safe for handling and consumption, what about the free radicals that are inevitably produced by the high kinetic energy of the beam? Free radicals are known to be capable of producing carcinogens. You wouldn't die tomorrow of food poisoning from pathogens from eating irradiated beef (or whatever), but who knows what lies down the line in a few years?

Tom S

No. There are several ways to pasteurize, it's a time and temperature relationship. Flash pastreurization is heating to about 190 F for seconds, you can pasteurize at much lower temperatures if you hold the product there for minutes. I'm not sure how your pasteurized juice would be processed, but I really think it's only an expedient way to get juice shipped by common carrier. Unpasteurized juice has to be shipped cold.

We have used unpastuerized juice for over 15 years and never had an issue with it (probably well over 1000 gallons between 3 of us). We have never had issues with fermenting to completion either. We use a culture year, usually from Lalvin or Red Star.

I'm not sure what happened to those two carboys, but expand on the problem and maybe the group can pin it down, it's a very useful forum.

I hope that helps. Joe

I too wish the food processing plants were in better shape. I will admit I don't eat much in the way of meat, and what little I do eat tends to come from local farms or such. However with more and more meat being consumed and companies all wanting higher profit, something has to give, and it's usually sanitation and such, since the consuming public cares more about price than health.

Well, FWIW, the World Health Org. approves of irradiation

I will admit I don't know much about the carcinogenic effects of free radicals, but I would think by their short-lived nature that they wouldn't be a problem since they recombine with other molecules before the food ever gets to the market.

However a quick look on google shows how much debate there is about this matter, so let's just settle on the conclusion that fresh juice and grapes are better than pasteurized or irradiated juice :^)

Thanks everyone for your comments. Much obliged.

Joe, do you "sanitize" your unpasteurized juice with sulfite before pitching the yeast? I'm pondering that procedure for fruit juice and unpasteurized grape juice. Which is the lesser of two evils - more chemicals or unknown natural strains of yeast/bacteria? That's the big question I guess.

The results of the unpasteurized juice I cooked this past year have not been great. As a newbie, I chalk some of it up to flawed procedure. Yet, I know some of the juices were "fermenting" when I got them. Makes me wonder if there was a slip in how it was stored somewhere in shipping.

Three carboys are toast. One is has a nice nose. Two have wild yeast overtones but are otherwise good. Any suggestions on how to mask that "wild yeast" taste? Flavouring agents perhaps? They are burgundy and alicante.

TIA