pear wine topping up question

[Airplanedoc]

I am making a 3 gal batch of pear wine from a Vintners Harvest Can. I am getting ready to rack it, and will need to do some topping up. A friend of mine has a juicer (a Jack LaLanne knock off) that I can borrow. I am thinking about juicing a handful of pears and using this for topping up. Will this work? any precautions that I need to take? Do I need to worry about browning?

Thanks

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[djrockinsteve]

You can do this but you are adding extra sugar to your wine and you will have to add some sorbate (1/2 teaspoon per gallon) to prevent the yeast (if any survived so far) from breeding and adding alcohol and CO2 to your carboy.

Also this will most likely cloud your wine again.

 

[wvbrewer]

You can try using a similar wine to top of with. If you can find a pear wine to use that would be good, but a mild dry white won't hurt either. It should not change that taste very much. I always try to make a little extra so I will have something to top off with later. If thats not a option sanitized marbles can be used.

 

[sly22guy]

You could also sanitize some marbles and add them to the carboy to take up the excess space

 

[Airplanedoc]

I have tried marbles previously, which in my opinion are PITA.

So I went with the Juicer idea, I juiced 8 pears topped up and have about half the juice left over. Its was the first racking so it is not terribly clear at the present time anyway.

Should I add a touch more pectic enzyme? Could I freeze the remaining juice to add later?

 

[Kanib]

I wouldn't add any extra enzyme if you already followed the instructions for the 3 gal mix. I have raspberry and plum batches going from Vinter's Harvest and after 2 months in the secondary they are almost fully cleared....give it time. I don't know how it ended up for you, but with both mixes I ended up with a full 3 gallon carboy and enough for a 1/2 gallon growler for top ups just by following the mix instructions. I tried to avoid most of the lees on my first transfer, but a few should help finish the secondary stage out....so don't worry if it's cloudy right now.

 

[Airplanedoc]

Had a minor mishap tonight. As I said I had a bit of juice left over and I was planning to freeze it for later topping up. So I poured it into a clear glass and set it in the front of the freezer until I could bag it. Evidently it slipped my mind until tonight when SWMBO opened the freezer and started hollering about who left a pee sample in the freezer. It didn't help when I came upstairs trying my very best to keep from laughing (I failed miserably). I managed to rescue the "sample" before it made into the garbage can.