Help with Pears

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mikegee

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Got a shed load of Conference pears to pick this weekend (the wasps say they are ready!) Planning to store them for a week or two to let the sugar develop then use the electric juicer. I want to make a wine any ideas or recommendations?
 
mikegee said:
Got a shed load of Conference pears to pick this weekend (the wasps say they are ready!) Planning to store them for a week or two to let the sugar develop then use the electric juicer. I want to make a wine any ideas or recommendations?
Click to expand...

I suggest to check out how and electric juicer copes with them, as you may well find it turns them into a mush. Pears are even difficult to crush & press (they turn to squish which wants to squirt out the press), and the the best method is to freeze them whole, defrost and press them whole as then a clear juice will run out leaving just empty skins that look rather like flat, dried figs.
 
Thanks for the reply David. Good point re the soft pulpy mush. Into the freezer they will go. I assume the same method would hold for apples?
 
mikegee said:
Thanks for the reply David. Good point re the soft pulpy mush. Into the freezer they will go. I assume the same method would hold for apples?
Click to expand...

It's supposed to also work well with apples, eliminating the need for pulping, but as I press around 2,000 lbs of apples I don't use this method despite having 5 freezers. I'm pressing about 50 lbs of pears today that have been defrosting since yesterday. I put crushed campden tablets at the bottom of the buckets to inhibit oxidation of the juice that starts being released as they defrost. I've got a 20 crossbeam basket press but find with defrosted pears it works best half full at the most, and even then proabably not as efficiently as my 5 litre spindle press. I'll take some pics.
 
50 lbs of ripe windfall pears like these were washed, bagged and put into a freezer for 3 days:

pearswindfalls.jpg


Then defrosted in several small buckets to speed up the process, carefully removing the soft, oozing defrosted pears into a single bucket :

pearsdefrosting.jpg


The clear golden brown juice that ran out whilst defrosting was collected in a seperate bucket (with campden tabs in to prevent oxidation). It's the one on the right with over a gallon of juice in:

pearsjuice.jpg


The shrunken, defrosted pears were then slowly pressed (don't rush it or they'll burst and spray pulp) in a half full basket (not too many at a time!) to get nearly another 2 galls of juice:

pearspressing.jpg


The pulp from pressing (as they were softish, really ripe windfalls they didn't press quite as flat as those picked from the tree and slightly firmer:

pearspulp.jpg


And back to the 60% juice that was extracted, on the left the pressed stuff compared with the slightly clearer juice than ran out by itself:

pearsjuice.jpg


Only another few hundred pounds of pears to go!
 
Bloody ell. I envy your setup and location there. Great pics. As a matter of interest and prob a silly question, do you bag you fruit in cloth before pressing?
 
mikegee said:
As a matter of interest and prob a silly question, do you bag you fruit in cloth before pressing?
Click to expand...

Yes, in a 30 litre coarse straining bag that's big enough to wrap around the top of 20 litres of pommace when I'm pressing apples. I was going to take a pic of that inside the basket press but it started raining and I forgot on the second pressing.

I'll also cover pasteurising the pear juice and show how by filling the bottles right to the top before heating in a water bath/pasteuriser how you can get any residual pulp to blow out the top like squeezing toothepaste out of a tube, washing the tops with boiling water from a kettle before capping and adding acid to assist in preservation.

Pure pear juice costs over £2 for a 750ml bottle in the shops and it's so easy to produce it yourself. Some of the juice will be bottled and given to the friend who lets me have the entire crop of their 3 pear trees and the rest will be fermented. OH also dehydrates pear pieces which I reckon taste far better than dehydrated apple rings.

So many people dont seem to know what to do with all their pears and leave them rotting on the ground - what a waste!
 
Have now got six (almost) gallons of pear juice with 5 Kg sugar, yeast and nutrient. I grated about 1 lb fresh pears to the mix for the tannin also added a 3 teabag brew. it has just started to kick off but I will have to wait till tomorrow to take an s.g. reading. I am thinking to add 3 ltr of red grape juice to give a "blush"
 
mikegee said:
Have now got six (almost) gallons of pear juice with 5 Kg sugar, yeast and nutrient. I grated about 1 lb fresh pears to the mix for the tannin also added a 3 teabag brew.
Click to expand...

I add 1 teaspoon of acid/gall to pear juice wine as it rather low in acid (also add it to pear juice prior to bottling to assist in preservation).
 
mikegee said:
Have now got six (almost) gallons of pear juice with 5 Kg sugar, yeast and nutrient.
Click to expand...

Did you use the freeze/defrost/press method in the end?

I've done another 4 galls today and put enough pears in the freezers for another 4 galls. Reckon on pressing around 25 galls of the stuff this year. I add a small amount (so it doesn't overpower the pear flavour) of white grape concentrate to my pear wine, such as cheap Youngs 6 bottle white grape kit from Wilkos in a 6 gall batch, and add sugar to get 1kg in the gallon (incl that in the juice and concentrate).
 
Yes I did. Works for me!! I just put another 15 Kg (ish) in the freezer and thats the tree stripped. Going to start on the russet apples tomorrow. There is an old footpath nearby lined with elders, going to try the same method with the berries. I am thinking of drawing off a gallon of the pear must and adding some dried elder flowers to see if the flavors mix.
 
40 bottles of golden colored pear plonk done yesterday. Estimate the ABV to be 12.5 - 13%. Had to sample the 3/4 of a bottle left and was really pleased with the result. Hoping it will be a good table wine for Christmas. :cheers: Thanks to David for some great advice.. :thumb:
 

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