Fruit in the primary ?

How many days can you ferment on the fruit in cool weather? I am running some pear batch's and do not have a press. Thanks Mike

Well I am looking at a KIWIT recipe by dogfish and the recipe recommends a longer primary than usual, like 15-20 days, and the kiwis would then turn whitish and rise to the surface. I guess this shows successful stripping of the sugars? Hope this kinda helps ? -Jake

Mike..you have to pay attention to the fruit. It is important you punch down the cap/straing bag twice a day, the fruit will start to fall apart assuming you cut into slices and slices into pieces. Bad odors are huge indicator of time to remove fruit, as is it an indicator of time to remove fruit if the cap starts to sink on its own. Low temp will help as long as your yeast is in that range. Eight days is the max for pears for me, and they are always a cool ferment. Freezing the sliced, chunked fruit even overnight will help a lot. Do not worry about fruit browning, it will happen but the wine will clear that away over time (at least mine have).

I been punching it down and smelling the sweet smell. My fruit looks a lot like it did the day I started. I have plenty of fruit I just want to get plenty of flavor from them before I put it in the carboys. Thanks Mike

I normally do a primary of 5-7 days or so, until the SG gets to 1.010 more or less. By then the fruit is pretty well spent. If your fermentation is really slow, it could be longer of course.

I use pectic enzyme in primary to help break up the fruit pectin, and it helps a lot. The fruit is pretty mushy spent stuff by the time I move to secondary.

Thanks Yooper, I used the enzyme when I started it. I just measured the sg and it sits at 10.00 flat. Racked it to the carboy and managed to fill it without getting too much sludge. My fruit is still fairly solid as I can not squish it in my hands. Went ahead and dumped it to the chickens they may as well get something from it... I figured it would be a mess by now but this is my first pear so I didn't quite know what to expect. I am guessing there will end up being a pretty good amount of solids in a couple weeks, Should I top with white grape or something along that line? Mike

i still like cooking my pears till there soft, then mashing in a mesh bag, 5 or 6 days in the bucket, then pull bag and squeez the devil out of it, solids are reduced by more than half, racked to carboy at .010, tow wks later i got about 3/4 inch of lees and still fermenting, did this last yr and was a definite hit, but be prepared to wait for it to clear it seems to take forever,

jim

Racked of batch number two today. I took the fruit out two days ago and ran thru a processor and returned to the primary. Today I got 6 and 1/2 gallons of wine. I only added about four and a half gallons of water to start. I believe I got a lot more product than from batch one. Only difference to start was ten more lbs of pears and ten lbs of peach's and it took two buckets to hold everything. The color is a lot more yellow as well some due to the peach i am sure. Hoping not to lose more than a half gallon due to settling of lees. Mike

oogaboogachiefwalkingdeer said:

Racked of batch number two today. I took the fruit out two days ago and ran thru a processor and returned to the primary. Today I got 6 and 1/2 gallons of wine. I only added about four and a half gallons of water to start. I believe I got a lot more product than from batch one. Only difference to start was ten more lbs of pears and ten lbs of peach's and it took two buckets to hold everything. The color is a lot more yellow as well some due to the peach i am sure. Hoping not to lose more than a half gallon due to settling of lees. Mike

Click to expand...

Oh, if you ran your fruit through a food processor, you'll lose a LOT of wine to lees, and you'll be sorry! (Next time, don't do that!) Hopefully the wine will clear eventually, but you'll easily have so much in the lees that you better have a 3 gallon carboy!

I will at least get five to bottle. I am thinking maybe closer to six. I don't see that much in the jugs today. No more than what is in the first batch I made. I ran batch two thru a super fine mesh to remove most of it at the start. It says to age at least a year so it should clear by then. If not batch one should be ready and I will wait it out. Mike