Pure Pear

[Arne]

Last fall I started a batch using pure pear juice. Picked the pears many of which were green. Probably should of let them ripen up more, but ran them through the grinder on the apple press, then pressed the juice out. Got enough for 5 gal. with nothing left over when racking it. Getting ready to rack it again, looked at it a few times over the winter, still pretty cloudy but needs to be raked off the sediment. Stole a taste and this is one of the best tasting wines I have made. Great nose, good pear flavor and even totally dry, easy to drink. Have not checked the s.g. to be sure it is totally dry but not fermenting any more. Going to rack it and see about getting it to clear. The basement is warming up some so clearing should be a little easier. Arne.

 

[Deezil]

I cant wait to do more pear myself, its potentially one of my favorites... I mixed my 2 gallons of pear with 3 gallons of apple... And then it all underwent MLF... Talk about blow me away

But that straight pear, that was definitely some good stuff

 

[Stressbaby]

Got any pics?

 

[Julie]

Arne, I have an all juice pear going as well, it is about a year and a half, up until a couple of months ago mine would not clear but I wasn't doing anything to clear it. I wasn't in a hurry to bottle this so I was letting it go to see if it would clear on its own. It didn't and about two months ago I added superklear and that cleared it right up.

I ended up with 3 gallons of finished wine. At a year old it is very good and I have been toying around with the idea of adding a little cinnamon and make it a Pear Chess Wine.

 

[Arne]

Got any pics?

Nope, havn't taught myself how to put them on the puter. It is a light color and not clear yet. According to Julie, looks like I am going to have to clear it. Just got my new counters finished last night, now I can go back to playing with my wines. Realy going to be nice, now have another 16 feet of countertop to let the carboys sit on. Going to be able to get to all of them now. Before they were stacked one behind the other and some were pretty hard to get at. All framed with 2X4's so they ought to be plenty sturdy. Arne.

 

[GreginND]

It sounds really good! I've never had a pure pear wine. But I'll bet some of those green pears helped give complexity to your wine.

 

[Turock]

We make pear wine almost every year, fermenting on the fruit and skins with very little water. It always comes out with intense flavor. But pear ALWAYS needs bentonite in the primary because pear is very hard to clear, otherwise. You could try Super Kleer on it and if that doesn't work, you can bentonite your secondary. When you rack off the bulk of the bentonite, in a month or so, get it under refrigeration to and it will finish clearing for you. REALLY--bentonite the primary and you will never have the sediment issue.

Regarding cinnamon---we always make some cinnamon pear and it's awesome. Make yourself an extract using a bottle of vodka and about 8 cinnamon sticks. Shake the bottle every couple of days and in a month or two you'll have an extract to add to the pear--works nicely on apple too. Use about 1/2 ounce of it per gallon of wine.

Extract works better than using cinnnamon sticks in the carboy because the alcohol content of the wine isn't strong enough to draw out the oils and flavor. We experimented with it and the cinnamon flavor depletes down to almost nothing after it's bottled for a while when using the sticks in the carboy. The extract, however, holds up very well after bottling.

 

[Julie]

We make pear wine almost every year, fermenting on the fruit and skins with very little water. It always comes out with intense flavor. But pear ALWAYS needs bentonite in the primary because pear is very hard to clear, otherwise. You could try Super Kleer on it and if that doesn't work, you can bentonite your secondary. When you rack off the bulk of the bentonite, in a month or so, get it under refrigeration to and it will finish clearing for you. REALLY--bentonite the primary and you will never have the sediment issue.

Regarding cinnamon---we always make some cinnamon pear and it's awesome. Make yourself an extract using a bottle of vodka and about 8 cinnamon sticks. Shake the bottle every couple of days and in a month or two you'll have an extract to add to the pear--works nicely on apple too. Use about 1/2 ounce of it per gallon of wine.

Extract works better than using cinnnamon sticks in the carboy because the alcohol content of the wine isn't strong enough to draw out the oils and flavor. We experimented with it and the cinnamon flavor depletes down to almost nothing after it's bottled for a while when using the sticks in the carboy. The extract, however, holds up very well after bottling.

Thanks Turock's,

I do have a note about you always using bentonite in your fruit wines. Unfortunately, all my fruit froze last year except I was able to get some elderberries but my cherries, apples and my friend who has the pears all froze last year. Hopefully that does not happen this year and I will be adding bentonite to the primary and thanks again for the tip on the extract.

 

[Polarhug]

I'm working on about 4 gallons of a pure pear. It's an experiment in the making! It's fermented and stabilized and today I added 3 more lbs of cut up pears to "dry hop" for a week. I'm seeing if the alcohol will pull more of the delicate aroma out as opposed to boiling it off in an F-Pac. But it already tastes mighty good!

Eventually the batch will be split into pure pear, and a pear/peppercorn using extract of pink peppercorns that I've been stewing in vodka.

 

[Turock]

I hear ya, Julie. No cherries, very few strawberries--a real bad year. The good thing about it is an orchard not far from me couldn't sell ANY of their Bartlett pears because the frost put black streaks on the skins of all the pears. They ended up selling us 100 pounds of pears for $48.00 just to get rid of them. That was the ONLY benefit from that frost!

By the by--did you ever make the Niagara/lime??? You don't know what you're missing if you haven't done it!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Julie]

Lol, I'm in the process of making on. I figured I would start a thread on it here in the next month or two.

 

[Turock]

Gee whiz Julie----we talked about it a WHOLE year ago--or more. What's the hold-up??????? (Don't mind me--just raggin' on ya.)

I'll be interested to hear what you think of it.

I see you've got a concord in your list of wines--thought you didn't care for concord. In the past year, we've been experimenting with other flavors on concord that you might be interested in. We added a couple star annis to a concord---it turned out really nice. We gave it to a number of people and they thought it was a winner, so we've got a whole carboy of it going now by adding the annis to the carboy. The flavor holds up well in the bottle and it's not over-powering--just in the background.

The other one was making our own vanilla extract and adding it to the concord. Boy oh boy--that one is really excellent.

I DO like concord on its own. But the other flavors add some options to what you have in the racks. Someone on another forum said they've added cocoa to concord it turned out good. Haven't tried that one tho.

 

[Julie]

Gee whiz Julie----we talked about it a WHOLE year ago--or more. What's the hold-up??????? (Don't mind me--just raggin' on ya.)

I'll be interested to hear what you think of it.

roflmao, my problem is I acquired some grapes and juices last fall that I wasn't expecting so I didn't have any carboys. I have a niagara going right now that I want to add the lime too and hopefully be ready for summer drinking.

 

[Turock]

Yep--that explains it--no carboys. Now you see how we ended up with 80 carboys!!! We had the same problem because we're always experimenting, doing MLF's,etc.

Just to review---be sure to add the 2 cans of limeaide when you go to bottle the Niagara and DON'T age it on the limeaide. Mix it up, add your sorbate and meta and bottle it.

 

[the_rayway]

I realize this is an older thread, but I have a quick question:

I'm about to start a pure pear juice wine, the juice is really more like pear puree - and I can't get an SG reading! I pop the hydrometer into it and it just glops to a halt. Should I pectic enzyme a sample and try again?

How did you all take the initial reading with pure juice?
Thanks, Ray

 

[jamesngalveston]

interesting question....which made me think of apple butter wine, since its like pear puree...
I think , i would add sugar and pectin and let it sit over night...then add water till the hydrometer floated.

 

[Deezil]

You need to pectic enzyme the whole thing for 24hrs or so.. If you havent already, i would dose it with k-meta, give it 12 hours then dose it wth pectic enzyme.. Then wait as long as you can stand it or until you see signs of natural fermentation before pitching your yeast

k-meta
wait 12 hrs
pectic enzyme
wait 12-24hrs
measure and adjust sugar/acidity
pitch yeast

 

[fivebk]

I steam juiced my pears. You don't have to mess with all the pulp this way. IMO pure juice with pear is the only way to go!

BOB

 

[the_rayway]

Thanks everyone!
I want to keep it 'pure pear' so I don't want to add water, especially as from what I read, pear has a very mild flavour to begin with. I think I'll give Deezil's advice a go and see what happens.

I also am now wondering if I could extrapolate the juice s.g. based off the sugar content in the nutritional information on the bottle...??

 

[seth8530]

Thanks everyone!
I want to keep it 'pure pear' so I don't want to add water, especially as from what I read, pear has a very mild flavour to begin with. I think I'll give Deezil's advice a go and see what happens.

I also am now wondering if I could extrapolate the juice s.g. based off the sugar content in the nutritional information on the bottle...??

You cant extrapolate it but you sure can calculate it. ( : If you are still interested this evening I will walk you through how to do it.