Sterilizing Apple Cider

Finding unpasteurized apple cider isn't easy. Outbreaks of illness linked to contamination of unpasteurized cider by e. coli bacteria have occurred in apple growing states from Maine to Washington, and cider producers have been sterilizing their product to protect consumers.

However, heating cider affects the taste, and researchers in the University of Maine Bio-Resource Engineering Program (BRE) are studying the use of ultra-violet light to sterilize cider without noticeably affecting the flavor. If they are successful, their work could help the cider industry protect public health and win back consumers who might have turned away from the pasteurized product.

Nazife Canitez, a master's student from Cyprus, has been innoculating samples of unpasteurized cider with bacteria and then treating it with varying levels of ultra-violet (UV) light. The project is underway with help from faculty members Darrell Donahue of BRE, Al Bushway of Food Science and Human Nutrition and Amyl Ghanem of Chemical Engineering.

“We are looking for an alternative to pasteurization,” says Canitez. “We bring the cider to our lab, spike it with harmless bacteria and then treat it with UV light. One of the problems with UV is that it doesn't penetrate very far through all the particles that are in cider. Some researchers deal with this by filtering the cider, but we prefer to test cider as it is actually produced.”

Canitez has also been giving samples of UV treated cider to subjects in the sensory lab in food science. The results indicate that people could not distinguish between treated and untreated cider, she says.

After she graduates, Canitez intends to continue working in the food industry in her country. She comes by her chosen career naturally. She grew up surrounded by delicious smells from her father's chocolate business, Horozoglu Chocolate and Confectionary, Ltd. Canitez received a bachelor's degree in 1998 in food engineering from Ege University in Izmir, Turkey. She intends to complete her project next summer.

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