Fresh Pear Preparation

[Stuart77047]

How do the people here who make pear wine prepare their pears. I have a couple pears trees so they do not all ripen at the same time. I don't think I will have enough to do separate batches with each type for a couple more years. Do you freeze the pears? Do you chop them up before you squeeze the juice out? Do you need to peal them and take the seeds out before you press them?

I have found a few recipes but no clear cut fruit preparation. I wanted some advice from people on the board that regularly make pear wine. Also any other pear wine tips would help. I have read about k-meta being very good for keeping them or the juice from turning brown.

Does it affect the flavor of a wine when the pear juice turns brown?

 

[djrockinsteve]

I made pear wine from pears that were starting to over ripen. The tree was damaged heavily by a bad storm and the people had it drastically trimmed. No pears for awhile now.

Anyway it turned out awesome. I pressed the juice out of them with a fruit press and added k meta right away to prevent browning. Add k meta to your bucket if you press from the beginning.

You can cut up into quarters and freeze if you want. If you have a vacuum seal they won't brown much at all if you and another person work quick.

After frozen tear open bags and dump into a bucket with some sugar water As soon as they reach @60* add pectin enzyme. . Once fully thawed take a gravity test and adjust accordingly. Add yeast.

Make sure you make enough to compensate for the fruits displacement.

 

[wood1954]

pears

I froze my pears and then thawed them out and ran them through my kitchenaide blender just enough to pulp them. I was a little concerned about cyanide in the seeds but after much research i found there is no worry. I did take off the stems. I tried mashing them up in a bucket with a 2x4 but they weren't ripe enough for that. I'm currently conducting battonage on my batch, which is stirring up the lees for a couple weeks before fining. It tastes good now lots of pear flavor, i'm thinking i'll backsweeten to about SG 1.000 good luck.

 

[Turock]

You can do as suggested above, but you can use them fresh,too. We don't peel them, but do core them and dice them into pieces so the pectic enzyme can work on them better. We bag all the fruit.

If you do it this way, be sure to add some meta to the pears as you work with them so they don't turn brown.

There's about 20 different ways to work with pears, and all of them are correct!!! Pick the one you like the best.

 

[jdrum]

welllll i don't have years of experiance with pear wine but i have done 3 batches this year. the first was a 1 gal batch, that was made from left over light syrup that i had processed for canned pears. turned out fantastic. 2 mos old and didn't last a week
the second batch was 5 gal from raw pears, peeled cored, sliced, and bagged.
all the goodies added. fermented to dry .096 . four months in secondary still cloudy but clearing slowly.
third batch started same day as the second. 2 gal made same as the first from the left over canning syrup, cleared in 2 mos, much better flavor.
so waiting for some aging, but next year there will be a lot more canned pears and perserves just to get the juice
..

jim

 

[Stuart77047]

How are you making the syrup from the pears?

 

[jdrum]

when canning pears you boil them in sugar water and can them in a light sugar syrup. just use more water and sugar than you need to fill the jars. i use the extra to make my wine boost the sugar up to 1.095 sg and go from there.
i think the boiling pulls enough of the flavor to make it work. i was worried about pectin haze, but so far it has cleared better, and quicker than anything else. i did use a little extra pectic enzyme . its kind of like steam jucing, then adding the sugar to the juice, but with more water.

plus you have all the pears to can. i did pears sliced and chunked, pear perserves and pear butter.this last year.

thinking of trying peaches, and figs that way next year.

jim

 

[MyOldKyHome]

Wash them, quarter and cut out the seeds and stems. Freeze them until you are ready to use them. I use a steam juicer to extract the juice.