My first perry pressing

[reebok]

After gaining experience with cider making I wanted this year to extend myself and have a go at making perry. It took a bit of time to source the fruit but eventually I was offered the pears from 2 garden trees. In total there was about 200lbs of which three quarters were soft, the remaining still on the hard side. A couple of weeks ago (3 September) I crushed and pressed them in my home-contrived cider press.
Here are a few pics...

What great, messy fun it was! I was astonished at the quantity of juice produced. The press will take a maximum of 6 'cheeses' and each pressing gave about 2.5 gallons of dark brown juice! The whole job yielded 12 gallons, far more than I expected, but a little short of the 14 gallons needed to completely fill my two 7-gallon fermenters so I re-wetted some of the pomace with water and pressed it again to get another 2 gallons of rather more diluted juice which was used to top up each equally.
I sulphited and pitched the yeast the next day and fermentation went off like a volcano then settled down. After only a week the colour of the juice had change to a lovely buttery yellow and as of today fermentation has virtually stopped so I will be racking off tomorrow. A sneak sampling revealed a soft, easy drinking young perry with a strong aroma of pear - plus a obvious alcoholic knock! A long way to go yet but if this ends as well as it has begun I can't wait to quaff the final product.

 

[Alan Clark]

Now, that's what a press should look like. Normally used for pressing bearings but what will quash a lot will pulverise a little.

 

[screamlead]

WOW that press is the dogs bo**ox! want one!! :party:

 

[Titch]

:clap: :clap: on the bench press

and :thumb: on the perry

 

[reebok]

Yes, the hydraulic bearing press is borrowed from my brother's motor repair workshop at this time of year and adapted to a quite different purpose! And it works just great. Will exert up to 10 tons force but anything much above 3 starts to destroy the oak stiffeners at the bottom! But that's more than enough to extract the juice anyway.

 

[tazuk]

sweet i was lloking for one of those looks like i got a year to find one sweet keep up the good work let us know how it goes ive just done about 160 ltrs of cider on the go lol :thumb: