Prickly Pear Cactus

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6 cans of welches frozen white grape conc.
9 lbs sugar
3 tsp energizer
3 tsp pectic enzyme
6 tsp acid blend
6 crushed campden
prickly pear juice to 6 gallons

To get the juice I had previously boiled the fruits for 35-45 mins, mashing them every so often to release juices. Discard fruit and strain juice through 2-3 layers of cheesecloth to remove all seeds and spines. **Make sure to wear thick gloves as those spines are no fun when they end up in your hands!**

Cleared fairly quickly. I sweetened this with 3 reg size bottles of light agave nectar and 2 cups of sugar. This came out to 15%, next time I think I will add less sugar :drunk:

This is the first recipe I've ever posted and I am still pretty new to this, so if anything is unclear just ask and I will try to answer. :mug:

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This maybe a stupid question,BUT, what is a prickly pear and what does it taste like?
 
Prickly pear are the fruits of an opuntia (sometimes called a nopales, or paddle) cactus. They have a ripe, sweet, mellow flavor that IMHO taste somewhere between a ripe pear and a fig. They make a wonderful jam/jelly or sweet candy and have been working their way into ciders and wines for a while now.

To harvest them, wear leather garden gloves and hold one with a pair of tongs or pliers. With your other hand, cut them off the pad of the cactus with a sharp knife. The fruits are covered with small spines, that can either be burned off or just rubbed off with a bit of burlap bag. Before using, they should be carefully peeled and washed (thin skin like a grape) using only the soft sweet flesh inside. They do contain edible seeds which can be removed if desired.
 
The red variety tastes exactly like a combination of watermelon, raspberry, and tomato. The green variety is more tart and less berry-like in flavor.

I prepare them like this, then I juice them with fresh lime juice, water, and organic light agave nectar. You have to strain through a China Cap and Chinois to remove the seeds and pulp. For a wine, beer, or mead, the fruit tastes best fresh. NO COOKING.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Did you boil the prickly pears with their skins on?
I had no idea you could do that.
I thought they might have a few too many tannins.

I lived in AZ and you could pick hundreds of lbs of prickly pears from the desert if you so desired. I really like the flavor.
 
I boiled with skins and all. That's how I always did it when I was making jelly. I already had the juice frozen when I decided to make wine. The color & flavor are great even when boiled. I've never done it the other way yet so I can't really compare the two.
 
Hi I'm new to this.
A couple of questions, how many pounds of fruit went into this ? Gallon batch (5 or 6), and which recipe did you use , the listed one or the one with agave nectar.
One more. How many ounces are in a regular sized bottle of agave ?

Thanks in advance
 
finishwizard said:
Hi I'm new to this. A couple of questions, how many pounds of fruit went into this ? Gallon batch (5 or 6), and which recipe did you use , the listed one or the one with agave nectar. One more. How many ounces are in a regular sized bottle of agave ? Thanks in advance

Well... Since I'm still kinda a rookie, I didn't weigh the fruit. Or pay attention to the size of bottle for the agave nectar. Sorry. But you will want to sweeten to your own taste anyway.
 
Snowgirl,

I hope mine looks this good when I bottle it. I've got it in the primary now and pretty much used your recipe (sugar instead of agave).

For those asking questions on prepping the fruit...
We picked our fruit, used a flame thrower to singe off all the spines, then froze the fruit whole.
After it was frozen for a few days, I allowed them to thaw, then used a steam juicer. (the first time around I did the chopping, boiling, mashing , draining method. Steam juicing is sooooo much easier)
I had so many to burn, freeze, and juice that I only really paid attention to the weight vs juice content at the very beginning and wasn't really scientific or diligent with it. I think the first batch of 15 lbs yielded around 1.5 gallons of pure juice.

Snowgirl, did you do two batches or just one?
 
Jericurl said:
Snowgirl, I hope mine looks this good when I bottle it. I've got it in the primary now and pretty much used your recipe (sugar instead of agave). For those asking questions on prepping the fruit... We picked our fruit, used a flame thrower to singe off all the spines, then froze the fruit whole. After it was frozen for a few days, I allowed them to thaw, then used a steam juicer. (the first time around I did the chopping, boiling, mashing , draining method. Steam juicing is sooooo much easier) I had so many to burn, freeze, and juice that I only really paid attention to the weight vs juice content at the very beginning and wasn't really scientific or diligent with it. I think the first batch of 15 lbs yielded around 1.5 gallons of pure juice. Snowgirl, did you do two batches or just one?

I did two. One with grape juice concentrate (frozen) sweetened with agave, and one with raisins sweetened with sugar. Liked the first one lots better
 
Last question. Did you drink your wine at the .090 dryness it fermented to or back sweeten with the agave nectar?
Thanks a lot.
 
finishwizard said:
Last question. Did you drink your wine at the .090 dryness it fermented to or back sweeten with the agave nectar? Thanks a lot.

I back sweetened with the agave, I'm not a big fan of dry wines.

I am also working on a mulled spice wine using prickly pear as the base wine, also using the dragons blood recipe. Excited for this one :D
 
snowgirl812001 said:
I boiled with skins and all. That's how I always did it when I was making jelly. I already had the juice frozen when I decided to make wine. The color & flavor are great even when boiled. I've never done it the other way yet so I can't really compare the two.

I made a run couple years ago. Loved it medium sweet drank it all. Making apple jack now..
 
Snowgirl,

How long did you let yours age before you bottled it?
Mine's been in the carboy for a month.
I'm considering racking again at the end of November, then hit it with SuperKleer, Sorbate, and backsweeten it in time to bottle for Christmas gifts.

Also, I was wanted to set aside 1 gallon of it to play around with.
I'm wondering what the addition of lime juice would do to it.
Any thoughts?
 
Jericurl said:
Snowgirl,

How long did you let yours age before you bottled it?
Mine's been in the carboy for a month.
I'm considering racking again at the end of November, then hit it with SuperKleer, Sorbate, and backsweeten it in time to bottle for Christmas gifts.

Also, I was wanted to set aside 1 gallon of it to play around with.
I'm wondering what the addition of lime juice would do to it.
Any thoughts?

I most time filter mine out till its clear for several months then 6 months or so bottle it . Have let it be almost 12 months sometimes in Carboy before bottling .
 
Jericurl said:
Snowgirl, How long did you let yours age before you bottled it? Mine's been in the carboy for a month. I'm considering racking again at the end of November, then hit it with SuperKleer, Sorbate, and backsweeten it in time to bottle for Christmas gifts. Also, I was wanted to set aside 1 gallon of it to play around with. I'm wondering what the addition of lime juice would do to it. Any thoughts?

Mine usually age for about 6 months in the carboy also. Never tried lime juice before, but experiment away! That's what I do lol
 
I have eight and one half gallons of some real nice tunas. How many gallons of wine would this yeild using a steam juicer? Also if I boiled mashed and drained how much water do you use to boil and do you add the boil water to the juice to increase volume?? Thanks Mike
 
15 lbs of fruit gave me about 1.5 gallons of juice.
I would go by weight rather than how many you appear to have in the buckets.
You are going to have to fitz around with it all since moisture content is going to be different for everyone.
If you have one and a half 5 gallon buckets full of tunas I would guess you could probably do between a 2 to 3 gallon batch.
If you have a steam juicer, I would definitely go with using it over chopping and mashing.

If you decide to use the steam juicer, rinse off your tunas, burn the spines off (don't roast them too much), then rinse them off again.
Freeze them for at least 24 hours, as freezing will break down the cell structure, resulting in more juice. Take them out of the freezer, let them thaw a few hours, then run them through the steamer. Don't add any water to the pure juice.

If you decide to mash and boil:
Rinse off the tunas, burn off all the spines, then rinse again. You will need to chop each tuna in half, scoop out all the seeds, then peel the outside skin off the fruit.
Chop your fruit up, juice will be running everywhere so have a way to collect it. Add fruit to the pan and add just enough water to the pan to be even with the fruit. You don't want to add too much water because it will dilute it. You just need enough to carry the heat for juicing the fruit.
You will also need to strain everything.
Now, because I am inherently lazy, when I was using the boil and mash method before I got my steam juicer, I just cut them all in half after the spines were burned off and froze them. I didn't mess with peeling and deseeding. After boiling and mashing, I attempted to run it through a strainer but after 2 or 3 hours it was STILL trying to drip through. I ended up tying it up in an old cloth and squeezing/letting it drip through. Labor intensive, messy, PITA, seriously...just use the steamer.

It's much easier to use the steam juicer. Did I mention you should use the steam juicer?
Whichever method you use, be sure to use pectic enzyme or you will end up with a substance that resembles magenta colored snot.
 
Ended up putting frozen tunas in a boil and mashed them with skins spines and all It was rather easy I thought. They smashed real easy and not much of anything left on the skins. Strained thru a fine screen and then thru a fine mesh grain bag. Ended up with four gallons of juice from 30 lbs. Used a gallon of water. Topped up with one gallon of blue berry pomegranate juice. 8 lb sugar and 1/2 cup lemon juice a little energizer 5 c tabs and 1118 yeast sg 1085. Smells really good now that the yeast is going.
 
Tuna is another name for Prickly Pear Fruit?

It looks very good. We are moving to AZ next Fall and it would be good to know this because my wife loves sweeter wines.

Thank you for sharing.
 
6 cans of welches frozen white grape conc.
9 lbs sugar
3 tsp energizer
3 tsp pectic enzyme
6 tsp acid blend
6 crushed campden
prickly pear juice to 6 gallons

To get the juice I had previously boiled the fruits for 35-45 mins, mashing them every so often to release juices. Discard fruit and strain juice through 2-3 layers of cheesecloth to remove all seeds and spines. **Make sure to wear thick gloves as those spines are no fun when they end up in your hands!**

Cleared fairly quickly. I sweetened this with 3 reg size bottles of light agave nectar and 2 cups of sugar. This came out to 15%, next time I think I will add less sugar :drunk:

This is the first recipe I've ever posted and I am still pretty new to this, so if anything is unclear just ask and I will try to answer. :mug:
I am fascinated by your recipe! I live in West Texas and make Prickly Pear everything. Could you please clarify the recipe instructions. It call for 9 cups of sugar but you talk about using agave and only 2 cups of sugar. Thanks.
 
Pretty sure the 9 lbs of sugar was added to primary to increase alcohol %, then the agave syrup and 2 additional cups were added for sweetness after it was stabilized.
 
I bottled my Prickly Pear a month or so back. Two five gallon batch's different recipe for each listed in previous posts. Both turned out really good. Worth the hassle of the spines and the slime in the bottom of the fermenter's when racking.
 
I boiled up about 6# of tunas and got a couple of gallons of juice. At first I had that beautiful color, but then it turned kinda of a dull pink. Tastes good...kinda melon/berry ish, sorta sweet. Bummed that I lost that pretty color...but I'm gonna ferment it anyway.

Was wondering if maybe the tunas were not completely ripe. The deer were munching them, so I figured I had better get my fair share before they did!
 
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