Here is a pear "wine" (really pear wine is called a Perry) recipe from an excellent book called "Strong Waters...A simple guide to making beer, wine, cider and other spirited beverages at home". It's not the recipe we used that I just talked about above but it's very similar. Really the big difference is they used apples as the secondary fruit where as we used 6 pounds of rasins in our 7 gallon primary along with 37 pounds (before cutting) of pears along with 10 pounds of sugar and champain yeast. About 6 or 7 weeks out we stopped fermation by adding Sorbate and Campden on our last racking along with 2 cups of sugar and two cups of water to make up for the lost volume. Really we would not have lost that much at that racking but like I said we kept putting most of the sediment back in because we kept putting the sediement through a mesh bag. Really that should only be done on the first and second racking probably (1st being moving it from primary to secondary). Anyway, here's their recipe and I'll post ours in a day or two...
In a blurb in this book the author says "pears have more sugar than apples and more unfermentable sugar as well, so perry is naturally stronger and sweeter than cider". We found ours was a dry wine until we added the two cups of sugar once fermation was over and we put in the Sorbate to insure no further conversion of the two cups. We hit it right on, as the wine isn't too sweat. Somewhere between a dry and a sweet wine I'd say in sweetness. The book also mentions the fact that perry's and ciders take much less time to make than "conventional" wines using grapes and such.
"Basic Perry
Check the labels when buying pear juice. Many brands already blend pear and apple juices. If this is the case with your juice, simply use 1 gallon of blend.
2 quarts apple juice
2 quarts pear juice
1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
1/2 teaspoon pectin enzyme, if using unfiltered juice
1/2 teaspoon grape tannin, or a cup of black tea
1 packet yeast: Premier Cuv'ee or Lalvin KIV-1116
7 teaspoons corn sugar, if making sparkling perry
1. Pour the juices into the primary fermenter. Stir in the yeast nutrient, pectin enzyme, and tannin (or tea).
2. Add the yeast, snap on the fermenter lid, and attach the airlock.
3. Fermentation is usually complete in 7 to 10 days. You can bottle it as is, or if you want a sparkling perry, add 7 teaspoons corn sugar and bottle the perry in Champagne-style bottles, beer bottles, or soda bottles. Whether you make a still or sparkling perry, you don't need to age it more than a couple of weeks, but it does become better conditioned after a couple of months.
Serving Suggestion: Served chilled in a white wine glass with blue or creamy cheeses."
(END QUOTATIONS)
I'm not sure if it's important or not but with ours we added the yeast 24 hours after adding everything else. Maybe it's because we used fruit while the above is using juices? Either way, I'll post our recipe/steps soon for comparison. Like I said, we bottled yesterday at almost 9 weeks and it's clear and tastes great. I bet if we would have racked properly early on we could have bottled it in half that time.
