# Pears!



## jburtner (Sep 3, 2016)

My buddy is picking pears today. Might end up with four or five buckets. Planning to core cut sulfite and juice them. Adding leftovers and juice into primary with PE, tannin, oak powder and sugar to 1080 or so.... Checking pH / TA and adjusting to ??? Pre-ferment... Pitching yeast a day or two later... 

Any recommendations for initial pH/TA and appropriate yeast would be appreciated. 

Tanks!
-jonathan


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## dralarms (Sep 3, 2016)

I wouldn't core them. The seeds wont hurt and you loosend some fruit by corning them.


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## jburtner (Sep 4, 2016)

Today we'll start with six buckets and see how many gallons we get. Yesterday I picked up some medium oak shavings 8oz. Dried Elderberries 8oz. Planning to throw in 4 or five lbs of golden raisins. Today we'll be cleaning chopping pressing - making the juice. Sulfite bentonite and sugar to just under ~1080/1090. I think the pomace and PE will raise it up in a day or so wanna shoot for a bit shy of the mark. I got premier cuvee yeast for this run. 

Cheers!
-JoBu


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## jburtner (Sep 6, 2016)

This is going to turn out very interesting. I was underwhelmed with the juice from three buckets. Ended up chopping all three and filling with water up to the pears.... Pitching the KMS, PE, oak, elderberries, and four pounds of yellow raisins... Let it sit for a day and measured SG ~1050 and pH ~4.2. Added six cups of sugar and some acid blend so will stir well and remeasure this afternoon - planning to add more sugar and pitch Premiere Cuvee. The elderberry has a nice flavor so may pick up another pouch of that plus more raisins. This is a fun experiment but the pears from this tree are not ideal as far as juice yield. The additives might make it work for a very light rose style.

Cheers!
-jb


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## wineforfun (Sep 6, 2016)

Following this thread as a coworker just gave me one 5 gal. bucket of pears. Not quite ripe yet so will let them sit for a few days/week or so. I am hoping to get close to a gallon of juice from them. 
Unfortunately, it will be "manually pressing" for me. (by hand in a mesh bag).


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## Scooter68 (Sep 6, 2016)

Ripe pears should be relatively easy to mash - unripe is another matter. Far easier than apples.


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## jburtner (Sep 10, 2016)

Bubbling away. Thats three five gallon buckets of pears chopped up in a 20g Brute. I'm amazed at how much color and flavor 8oz of dried elderberries added. 

Cheers!
-jb


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## geek (Sep 10, 2016)

How much water you added? I heard that whole pears and no water is the way to go.


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## jburtner (Sep 12, 2016)

geek said:


> How much water you added? I heard that whole pears and no water is the way to go.



That would have been my preference. I pressed and these pears were giving up no juice at their stage of un-ripeness. Maybe 1/2 gallon out of the three buckets. That was frustrating.

I filled the 20g brute with chopped pears to about slightly more than 3/4 full then added water up to the top of the pears - was about 4g water. I also added 1g of pear syrup from LHBS since they didn't give up much juice...

They seem to be breaking down fairly ok though now (they'll press nicely in a couple days) for what the original pears were and I had also added about 20c sugar... Estimated original SG ~1090.

I had also added 4lbs golden raisins and 8oz elderberry. 

The pears weren't in best shape so trying to fix it - and it looks like the efforts will work out well but next time i'd pass on the less than ideal pears just because I would prefer to make a 100% all juice wine and not mess with syrups at this point.

All the pressings I did so far throughout this run gave up juice with an SG of ~1050.

I'll have to wait and see how much juice total comes out after pressing and xfer to glass. I'm thinking 2x carboys.

Cheers!
-jb


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## jburtner (Sep 13, 2016)

Pressed and racked to 2x 6g carboys @ ~1010. 



Cheers!
-jb


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## jburtner (Sep 16, 2016)

This quite a lot of sediment drop. Anyone have any pointers on how to get that initial drop to be more compact so we lose less wine on the first racking after fermentation is over?

Can I use my AI1 and a course filter as a lees filter or similar?

Thx,
Jb


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## bkisel (Sep 16, 2016)

Did you use any wine clarifier such as Super-Kleer?







Maybe you could agitate just a little to see if it would compact some?


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## Johnd (Sep 16, 2016)

jburtner said:


> This quite a lot of sediment drop. Anyone have any pointers on how to get that initial drop to be more compact so we lose less wine on the first racking after fermentation is over?
> 
> Can I use my AI1 and a course filter as a lees filter or similar?
> 
> ...



Wow! Looks like a lot of solids in the secondary. Not that you can do it now, but when pressing, try using a fine mesh bag either inside or outside of your press basket. If you have a press with a spindle that is mounted to the press bottom, you can't do that without punching a hole in your bag, but can use a series of stainless sieves to keep out much of the solids.

With that quantity of gross lees, I know you don't want to leave your wine on them long, so waiting for it to compact isn't really an option. I doubt a filter will do much good, it'll clog so fast. Did you consider racking off the clear liquid from each carboy and putting the lees / sediment into a fine mesh bag and just letting gravity remove the liquid?


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## jburtner (Sep 16, 2016)

Thanks for the replies! I slurried bentonite into the primary phase before pitching yeast but have not used any secondary clearing agents... I do have some Sparkoloid on hand.

These are not quite done with ferment yet but should be done within a couple days. Maybe I can rack into 5g carboys and try separating the gross lee's a bit more... Washing machine on spin with the slurry loaded into some smaller containers??

I'm going to read up on the Super-Kleer too.

Thx!
-jonathan


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## the_rayway (Sep 16, 2016)

When I did my pure pear, I ended up racking the wine, then pouring all the lees into a bucket, and plonking it into the fridge for a few days/a week. The lees compacted really nicely.


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## monkfe (Sep 17, 2016)

I recently did a pear wine. This is what I did with information from others. I had a total of 74 lbs of cored pears. I had froze them prior to coring them. I then added water and sugar to a get a sg of 1.090 added acid blend and tartaric acid ( I blended more of the tartaric then the acid blend). I got a TA of 6 g/l . Added bentonite, PE. I had a about a total of 20 gal total. I let this go to dryness (around .992 as I recall). When it came time to remove the wine and put it into carboys, that's when the fun began. It was incredibly thick. I used a stainless steel screen I used for honey extracting to remove the peels and pulp. It was a major pain in the ***. Each gallon had to be carefully poured into a bowl through the sieve, and then the sieve cleaned and start over. I wish I had used a mesh bag for the fruit, but didn't have one on hand. Lesson learned. I also have a significant amount of lees that I have yet to rack. (picking up a small variable capacity container today on craigslist !) I currently have a 6 gal, a 5 gal and about another 2.5 gal in another carboy. I'll see how much this comes out to after my initial rack. Notice the three different colors, the right is the first carboy filled, the left is the second, the middle is the bottom of the fermenting container. Notice the darker color.


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## Brigitte (Apr 23, 2017)

Monkfe
We have about 100 pounds of whole pears in the freezer. Hoping to start them today. I was wondering how your pear wine is doing and 
If you have any advice. We will be using a press to extract juice. Also we are thinking about adding pineapple juice or fruit to the mix. The pears are not overly ripe. 
What yeast did you use? And any other advice would be great 
Thanks


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## AkTom (Apr 23, 2017)

My only experience with pears turned into some delicious vinegar;-)


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## Brigitte (Apr 23, 2017)

AkTom lol!


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## monkfe (Apr 24, 2017)

Brigitte said:


> Monkfe
> We have about 100 pounds of whole pears in the freezer. Hoping to start them today. I was wondering how your pear wine is doing and
> If you have any advice. We will be using a press to extract juice. Also we are thinking about adding pineapple juice or fruit to the mix. The pears are not overly ripe.
> What yeast did you use? And any other advice would be great
> Thanks




I bottled it a couple of months ago, I blended it with apple wine I made at the same time. I would do the following if I did it again. Use a mesh bag that is made for this as the pulp was unbelievable and very difficult to remove. It took forever using two different wire mesh kitchen type strainer to get the pulp out. Use only tartaric acid to adjust the TA, not the blends as I did. I believe I used a white wine yeast , cote de blancs I believe . Look at the post and I believe someone recommends it in there. Use a very fine filter when you bottle, I used a no 2 I believe and I'm seeing some very fine sediment in the bottle. The wine is good, very light and the flavor is still developing and getting better. I don't know how you would measure the SG if all the fruit are in bags however and I guess you'll have to use a set recipe and adjust according to the weight of the pears . I cored the fruit prior to fermentation, but left the skins on. Hope this helps. Paul


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## pip (Apr 25, 2017)

jburtner said:


> Thanks for the replies! I slurried bentonite into the primary phase before pitching yeast but have not used any secondary clearing agents... I do have some Sparkoloid on hand.
> 
> 
> -jonathan



Hi Jonathan, i have a question regarding why you'd use bentonite prior to pitching yeast. From my understanding, bentonite is for dragging particles to the bottom but why would you want that during fermentation given that those particles may contain esters and sugars...and yeast? 

Just wondering about your reasoning there, it obviously didnt affect the ferment.


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## Johnd (Apr 25, 2017)

pip said:


> Hi Jonathan, i have a question regarding why you'd use bentonite prior to pitching yeast. From my understanding, bentonite is for dragging particles to the bottom but why would you want that during fermentation given that those particles may contain esters and sugars...and yeast?
> 
> Just wondering about your reasoning there, it obviously didnt affect the ferment.



Bentonite is frequently used as a clearing agent, in with the alcoholic fermentation. During AF, the particulate bentonite is circulated by CO2 production throughout the must, increasing its effectiveness at attracting oppositely charged particles. That turbulence keeps it all moving pretty well throughout the vessel. To my knowledge, esters and sugars are in solution and are not particulates, and therefore not affected by appropriately sized doses of bentonite, the yeast will end up in the bottom with the bentonite as the fermentation winds down. 

In proper doses, it is a productive addition, but if the dosage is too large, it may strip some properties from the wine, so be judicious in the dosing. These days, most wine kits come with a little bentonite dose, so it is a frequent addition.


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## Brigitte (Apr 25, 2017)

monkfe said:


> I bottled it a couple of months ago, I blended it with apple wine I made at the same time. I would do the following if I did it again. Use a mesh bag that is made for this as the pulp was unbelievable and very difficult to remove. It took forever using two different wire mesh kitchen type strainer to get the pulp out. Use only tartaric acid to adjust the TA, not the blends as I did. I believe I used a white wine yeast , cote de blancs I believe . Look at the post and I believe someone recommends it in there. Use a very fine filter when you bottle, I used a no 2 I believe and I'm seeing some very fine sediment in the bottle. The wine is good, very light and the flavor is still developing and getting better. I don't know how you would measure the SG if all the fruit are in bags however and I guess you'll have to use a set recipe and adjust according to the weight of the pears . I cored the fruit prior to fermentation, but left the skins on. Hope this helps. Paul




Thanks for taking time to write all that out Paul! We actually have a bladder press so the sediment isn't an issue but I can see where it could be. We pressed last night. OG was 1.051 and we added sugar to get to a 1.075 sp grav hoping for around a 10%ABV for a nice mellow wine. We pressed with skins on and then placed 5 cups of cut up fresh pineapple into mesh bags and then those into the juice in the fermenters. Hoping to add a little more flavor and interest to the wine. We ended up with 15 gallons of pear juice so we have 3 fermenters going. We have not adjusted acid yet. My pH meter is messed up. Do you think I could add acid later and be ok? 
Thanks for the heads up on the tartaric acid. We added yeast tonight... Rhone something .. Can't remember exactly right now and my records are in the other room lol. 
I may bug you again with questions if you don't mind. 
Thanks again !


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## monkfe (May 2, 2017)

"Do you think I could add acid later and be ok?" My understanding is you want to adjust it earlier rather than later. Adjust half way and give it a couple more days and check again. I'm curious how much actual juice you got from the pears themselves after pressing? Paul


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## Brigitte (Aug 1, 2017)

Hi Paul. I have not been here in a long time. Just now saw your question. We had 15 gallons of juice. After racking a couple of times we have about 12 gallons now. It is in cold storage and needing some attention. It hasn't cleared well and the acid is low. Not sure what to do with it at this point. Lol


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