Pear Wine

Today was the crush/press. I started with 257 pounds of pears. About 30 pounds were picked last week and put in the freezer as they were just ripe and I wasn't ready to process them. The rest were picked a few days ago. The majority of them were still firm. Ideally I would have liked to wait a week to press them but with harvest upon us I will be working every day for the next two weeks at least 10 hours a day. It's an exciting time of year for sure. So with that said I had no choice but to shred and press today.

The 257 pounds produced about 15 gallons of juice at 10 brix. 25 drops of Zymo-clear was added (super concentrated enzyme). Tomorrow I will add the 71B yeast followed up with Bentonite the next morning.

I pulled the pears out of the freezer last night and they were mushy at press time this afternoon. I thought I would just press and not shred. It wasn't good enough and I emptied the press bag into the shredder after that press and ran it through the shredder. I will never freeze pears again before pressing if I don't have to. The other pears I just shredded into the paint strainer bags then pressed when I had three of them filled.

...and thats the way it was on September 14, 2013.

Thanks Turock and Bob (fivebk) for your suggestions.

This oughta be a fun thread to follow..

Any chance you use additives like Booster Blanc or Opti-White?

Yep Im in, Keep us posted. I love pears. Those look like Buckets full of Morel Mushroom's lol

Deezil said:

This oughta be a fun thread to follow..

Any chance you use additives like Booster Blanc or Opti-White?

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I do not use them but will check them out. I have to say when I tasted the juice it was even lighter than expected.

Runningwolf said:

I do not use them but will check them out. I have to say when I tasted the juice it was even lighter than expected.

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I havent made a batch without them since I learned about them..

I have a bottle of MLF'd Apple-Pear w/ Booster Blanc + Opti-White + FT Blanc Soft (tannin) with your name on it, to make up for the lack-of-Peach.. Soon as I bottle a bunch, I'll be sending it all out

I'm impressed. Way beyond my abilities and means but I'll happily follow along if you intend to keep us posted.

Ok Manley I'm in on the Opti-White. I'm not sure if I can find the Booster Blanc locally. At what rate do you add it?

My boys are doing some pear wine right now. I told them to run the pears through the Jaffrey shredder and put the pulp in the bags. They were afraid of the seeds so they hand cored bushels and bushels of pears and cubed them up.Let me know if the seeds affect the wine at all so I can show them your reply!

I will do that Rich. I have a "Happy Valley" apple press and I left stems and core in place, just fed the entire pear in. I'm interested in knowing what your brix end up at and volume of juice vs starting weight. I'll add 16.5 pounds of sugar when I start fermentation tomorrow. Incidentally I did not see any broken seeds and I did look for them. Zero seeds made it through the strainer bags.

Runningwolf said:

Ok Manley I'm in on the Opti-White. I'm not sure if I can find the Booster Blanc locally. At what rate do you add it?

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1.5 - 1.75g per gallon (i usually shoot for 1.75g, but its because I like what it does)

Manufacturer recommends 1.15 - 1.92g per gallon (7 - 12g per 6 gallon batch)

This looks delish already. Please keep the progress posted, I like making wine by proxy.


I know I'll never own a press so I'll just have to watch and wish.

Dan--Be sure not to add the bentonite until the 3rd day of the FERMENT.

my first ever batch of pear wine i ran the pears thru a blender seeds and all. The juice had a nutty smell to it from the seeds. After fermenting it disappeared. I also diluted the juice 50% and it tasted better than my last two batches of 100% juice.

Turock, thanks for the clarification

Today I started the fermentation with 18.57 grams of 71B yeast and the same amount of Goferm. In addition to the yeast starter that is pictured below I stirred in 16.5 pound of sugar. With regards of adding zero water I chose not to make a simple syrup for this fermentation.

wood1954 said:

my first ever batch of pear wine i ran the pears thru a blender seeds and all. The juice had a nutty smell to it from the seeds. After fermenting it disappeared. I also diluted the juice 50% and it tasted better than my last two batches of 100% juice.

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Thanks for the info. I am planning on adding a very small amount of crabapple to this wine or a large a large blend of both. Just something I'm thinking about in the spring when they are finished. It's going to be fun doing bench trails.

wood1954 said:

my first ever batch of pear wine i ran the pears thru a blender seeds and all. The juice had a nutty smell to it from the seeds. After fermenting it disappeared. I also diluted the juice 50% and it tasted better than my last two batches of 100% juice.

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If you have means to shred the pears, like a fruit chopper, I would use the whole pears. Those types of machines typically don't grind up the seeds. I have made apple and pear wines many times via this method -- I ferment in the primary with the fruit and press when it goes into the secondary.

I agree that a blender will be too harsh on the seeds.

Just before I left for dinner I snapped this picture of the juice already rocking and a rolling 4.5 hours after introducing the yeast starter.

I envy you, Dan. The pear I made last year is some of the best wine I have ever had. It was great shortly after post ferment, thought it went south a month or two later. Left it alone and it came back to great. Time to bottle it, but it is really really good. Arne.

Arne said:

I envy you, Dan. The pear I made last year is some of the best wine I have ever had. It was great shortly after post ferment, thought it went south a month or two later. Left it alone and it came back to great. Time to bottle it, but it is really really good. Arne.

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Yeah my Apple-Pear is hands-down my best batch to date.. I never knew I'd make a wine, of that caliber.

This thread is actually has me considering a Pear Melomel

Can you post your pear recipe? I've almost given up on pear wine which is a shame as there are so many pears for free or cheap. Checking my notes last year i added 1.5 gallons of water to 90 lbs of pears and used D254 yeast which stopped at SG 1.010, tried getting it going with EC-1118 but no luck.