Pear question

[RomeoWhino]

I need some help. (That's what my wife tells me anyway. )
I made a batch of Pear a year ago, and it turned brown and I could not get it back. Bummer.

Here's where I'm at today.........

I am in the transition of from only making wine at home to making wine for comercial sales at an orchard. Westview Orchards to be exact. We have enough pears to make about 500 Gallon but I'm only going to do about 100. The problem is, I can't afford to let 100 gallon of pear wine go brown on me again. I guess I need to know what, when and how much I need to add to the juice to keep this from happening.

Since we are a rather large orchard, we have a Cider press. It's a belt type press and my intention is to press the Pears and the juice will end up in a 650 Gallon stainless agitaing tank within a few seconds of being pressed. My thought is that whatever I need to add should be added to the juice in the tank as soon as possible after pressing. I thought I'd let it agitate to mix whatever I add. Then, I'd move the juice to primary fermentation.


Any help on this would be greatly appreciated!!

John

 

[Mud]

Home cider makers generally add lemon juice or ascorbic acid (fruit fresh, vitamin c) to the receiving vessel before pressing to prevent oxidation. Pear is not forgiving. It oxidizes very quickly, within seconds in my limited experience.

 

[Luc]

So another pro turning to us mere hobbyists for advise.
We should charge you for it..........

Look here, this applies for apples but will work for pears to I presume. Make a small test and you are sure what to do:

http://wijnmaker.blogspot.com/2008/03/bruin-worden-van-appels-browning-of.html

Luc

 

[Wade E]

Sulfites and ascorbc acid together will prevent this from happening. Use just enough sulfites to stun the wild yeast and then ascorbc acid (vitamin C) as an added prevention. Here is a post with a link to what another guy to pretty much fix his browned wine.

The product I used as Wade mentioned was Polylact - a Scott Labs product. That is composed of two products - Polyclar and lactose (powdered milk). The wine I had was very dark for the type and had an off flavor. I treated the wine as per directions and amounts at max (1 oz per 20 gallons). What a transformation. It retained all aromatics, lightened the colors and got rid of the off flavors. It looks gross when first put in the wine as it makes like cottage cheese in the wine. Within two days the wine was mostly clear. They recommend filtering which I did to 1 micron in size.

Hopefully Wade doesn't mind. I got the product in small amounts from Fallbright.com in NY. It isn't super cheap but less than throwing the wine away.......

To keep from posting a link to the store if that isn't allowed here, I will instead post a link to the instructions for it there.
http://www.fallbright.com/polylact_scottlabs_instructions.htm

 

[Midwest Vintner]

luc, as always, nice info there.

we've learned this same thing ourselves after working both apple and pear we've always used lemon. then one day we thought, what about droping the apples in the water between stages, while we work them. bingo, sulfite water worked great. didn't know that it worked better though.

it won't be as easy in a commercial setting though and thus we've also contemplated not doing pear and apple for this reason.

even if we get our setup going, i don't consider myself a "pro." if anything, i'm more of an enthusiast living my dream. we also plan on coming out with a few firsts for commercial setups and there's more to come.

good luck romeo and hopefully all is well.

 

[RomeoWhino]

Well everybody I'd like to thank you all for the wonderful advice. Luc, I'd hardly call myself a Pro. LOL

Just before Christmas, I pressed 50 Gallon of Pear and 150 Gallon of Apple. I pre-mixed some Potassium Metabisulphite and added it a littlle at a time to the main pump tank as it came out of the press. From that tank it's then pumped to the 650 gallon stainless holding tank. That worked awesome. The Pear and the apple have excellent color with no browning whatsoever.

Thanks everyone for your input, it has been greatly appreciated.

John