Pear Wine Question

[Runningwolf]

I want to step up the flavor of my pear wine that is already good. I was going to steam some pears in my virgin steamer and add that juice to it. I have 13 gallons. Someone mentioned to me about freezing two gallons and thawing it out just enough to eliminate the water and adding that back in. I know it is legal as there are some wineries doing it. Has anyone ever done this to make a flavor pack. I know the alcohol will be raised some but so will the flavor and the body of the wine. High alcohol is not me focus here on this delicate wine.

 

[Deezil]

I've read about it some but haven't found myself in the position to need to do it, yet... And it's legal to a certain ABV, but I cant honestly remember at this moment; anywho, not the focus here..

I would just take those pears you mentioned having, and k-meta / pectic enzyme them, then add that slurry to the wine and let it soak; less manipulation of the flavor.

Or a mixture of the two, removing "just enough" liquid in freezing to make up for the addition coming from the extra pears (or deal with the difference)

 

[dralarms]

Or you can buy a concentrate from homewinery.com (they make a concentrate for a 1 gallon batch) and add it to your wine.

 

[jamesngalveston]

I tried it with some strawberry db...it worked. but only froze a gallon.

 

[Turock]

Dan--was this the pear you made last year? Were those Bartlett pears that you used? And if I remember correctly, you used no water.

We've made pear wine for many years. And from our experience, it takes some good aging time to develop the flavor, as long as you used a flavorful pear. There are some varieties that always will have a light flavor to them, and may need some bulking up of flavor. Pear is one of the fruit wines that gets better and better with aging. A two year old pear is really great!

So you might just want to allow it to age more--I would suggest at least 1 year--then evaluate if you need to do anything with it.

 

[Zog]

I've been using frozen concentrate in my cider wine making for several years now. But I don't freeze the fermented wine. After the wine is dry and stable, I re-sweeten it with a concentrate made from additional bottles of frozen cider. The other method I've used is to make the concentrate first to reduce the water and raise the brix, so I don't have to add sugar to get the potential alcohol I want. I just ferment the concentrated cider.

Either way it really adds a lot of fruit flavor. And should work the same with pears. The downside is that it take 4 or 5 gallons of fresh cider to make one gallon of concentrate, so the raw material costs are high.

 

[Wade E]

Wineries might have a special permit to do freeze distillation. Better check it out 1st

 

[Runningwolf]

Wineries might have a special permit to do freeze distillation. Better check it out 1st

Wade you're right. I was just with a group of wineries and a distiller and that is exactly what he told me.

 

[Deezil]

The Federal Wine Regulations, Title 27, Code of Federal Regulations, Part 24.75, Wine for Personal or Family Use

The way I understand it, is that as long as the finished product is still legally classified as wine, then the regulations don't allow or prohibit any wine-making activities

To be Federally legally classified as wine, the ABV has to stay under 24%

There may, however, be State-level laws - so check those for sure.

I may ask the TTB, because I've always wondered myself - for sure, for sure..

 

[Runningwolf]

It would be very interesting if you did. This has been long debated with wine makers.