Making a batch

Heat treatment

Updated October 2026

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What heat is for Pasteurize, or hot fill Validation is what makes it count What it costs References

The step that turns a perishable drink into a shippable one, and the step a live product cannot have.

What heat is for

Reducing the microbial population: pathogens, which is the safety question, and spoilage organisms, which is the shelf life question.

For juice it is the usual route to the 5-log reduction.

For a fermented drink it is also how the culture is stopped, which is what makes the product stable and what removes the live claim.

Pasteurize, or hot fill

Flash pasteurization: heat rapidly to temperature, hold briefly, cool rapidly, then fill cold. Best flavor retention, and it needs a heat exchanger and a cold sterile filling arrangement.

Hot fill and hold: heat the product, fill hot into the container, seal, and let the hot product sanitize the container and the headspace, often by inverting the bottle.

Hot fill is within reach of a small operation and it constrains the package: the container has to take the fill temperature, which rules out ordinary PET and some closures, and the vacuum formed on cooling can panel a bottle not designed for it.

Tunnel pasteurization: fill and seal cold, then heat the sealed container. Common for carbonated products, because it does not lose the gas.

Validation is what makes it count

A time and temperature is not a process until somebody has established that it delivers the required reduction for your product and the pertinent pathogen.

That is what a process authority does, and it is the same relationship the acidified foods world has.

Then monitoring: the temperature and the hold time recorded for every batch, because a validated process you did not follow is not a process.

What it costs

Flavor, particularly the fresh and volatile notes, which is precisely what a cold-pressed or craft product is selling.

Color, in anything anthocyanin-based.

The live claim.

And equipment or a co-packer.

What it buys is ambient distribution, a real shelf life, wholesale access and a solved pathogen question, which between them are most of what a business needs to grow.

References

21 CFR Part 120, Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) Systems for juice. Covered processors must achieve a 5-log reduction in the pertinent pathogen. ecfr.gov

US Food and Drug Administration. Juice HACCP Hazards and Controls Guidance. How the 5-log requirement is met, validated and monitored. fda.gov

Cornell University, Cornell Food Venture Center, which acts as a process authority and publishes on scheduled processes and co-packing for small beverage producers. cals.cornell.edu

Written from the federal regulation and agency guidance named on each page, not from a laboratory. Whether a particular product meets a pathogen reduction requirement, and what its alcohol content actually is, are measurements about your product, and this is not those measurements.