hi
yes I'm doing great thank you so much for noticing,, , this is my longest stretch ICU free,, knock on wood,, as for my apple pear blends I start with equal amounts of fresh fruit from the freezer, I got electronic scales up to 50 lbs. for my fruit, j put them together from the start,,, if I make apple then I use apple, same with pear, any blending I do is started in the fermenter already blended,, but this or these are going to my brothers platoon, they were in the very first wave into Baghdad , all came home alive all but 2 got chemical exposure including my brother, VA once a month iminium of the 2 that didn't 1 fell into a sewer system so all but 1 got 100% disabled in combat zone,, an drowned, was revived and lost 1 lung, but hatch still a nut, known him an a couple more for better then 30 years, none of em are the same in their mind including my little brother,, but here while back a few got together at my brothers, I broke out my custom built stick smoker from when I traveled,,, a bunch of farm raised pork ribs an a few cases of wine so all these are the same tasting, you can bet 1 off bottle I'll hear about it, well I have robbed the closet,, shhh,, was getting care free and remembered I had not thanked you for noticing my much improved health,,, , so that's where I ended up wanting to blend these apple/pear wines at first I was going to add the apple as well then decided to corner that for long term aging with honey added to, as you can tell I done forgetting the worl,,,,,d ,, thanks
richard
Hey Hounddawg, sounds like you are really doing well. I make a lot of fruit wine and at first I tried to blend down the wines that seemed "strong". Not really a too much alcohol thing, but a really sharp taste that was not pleasant. When I had enough wine to let stuff age like everybody said I discovered that the apple wines really mellowed out at the one year point. I'm thinking that any fruit with a lot of malic acid will have this "bite" until the malic mellows down. Just like grape wine, which also has a lot of malic.
One thing you could also try is using Lalvin 71B yeast which really reduces malic acid and makes fruit wines with malic acid drinkable sooner. Or just wait a year if that can work for you. At the rate you seem to making wine, it probably won't be long before you can hand out what seems ready to drink and let the other stuff age and improve all by itself. Makes a much better wine aging too.
Pam in cinti