Perry throwing weird lees

Hi everyone,

About a week ago I started a perry. I used 5 litres (~1.3 gal) of pasteurised, cloudy pear juice with vitamin C. Beforehand, I rehydrated the yeast (Arsegan Medium Sweet Cider Yeast) for 25 minutes in water at the appropriate temperature. I aerated the juice by pouring 1/3 of each bottle in the primary fermenter, shaking the fermenter and the bottles, pouring another 1/3 in and shaking again, and then pouring everything in and pouring in the yeast. I also added yeast nutrient and pectic enzyme.

Within a few hours, fermentation kicked in and boy, did it kick in hard. It's summer here and temps are around 20-23 °C (68 - 73 °F), maybe that's what's causing it. I know ciders do better at low temps, but I really wanted to make a perry. Anyway, there were constant bubbles in my airlock by evening, and the next morning my airlock had overflowed. I put vodka in de lock, so I assumed it would be ok. I left it alone for a week.

A week later it's still not completely fermented. I removed the garbage bag I had wrapped around it to check up on it and discovered that the lees looked very strange, at least to my unexperienced eyes. I've attached a picture of it. It looks a bit like mould. Is this normal, or is the cider screwed? And if so, can I save it by racking it carefully to a secondary? Also, do I need to add more nutrient now? I haven't measured my gravity yet, for fear of disturbing the lees, but my OG was 1.044.

I was loosely following the Pleasant Perry recipe from this forum, which doesn't use a secondary. So if it's not necessary, I'd rather not go through the hassle.

Thanks in advance!
~Qopzeep

Forgot to attach the picture

View attachment 1437654174004.jpg

No experience with perry, but it looks like it's just normal pulp, and other stuff coming out of solution.

Molds prefer to live at the interface between liquid and air. So you'd usually see it as a fuzzy ring around the outside of your fermenter at the waterline. Or if you had added fruit it would be on the dry part of it.

You have not been stirring it have you so stuff settled out and maybe stratified, any chance you took some sg readings? Since it feremented well you obviously didnt have any preservatives, if you think its not done yet give it a gentle stir to get the yeast up off the floor, slow stirring. How do you plan to tell when its done and ready to be racked to another jug? WVMJ

Thanks for your answers everyone. I tasted it today and it tasted pretty good, so I'm less worried. I took a readin which said 1.010, down from an OG of 1.044. I'll check it again in a few days. There was no mould as far as I can tell, but there were a lot of pieces of dried up foam from the initial fermentation.

So I guess it's fine then. Thanks for your help guys!

Where did you get your pear juice?

In the super market. I'm from the Netherlands, so I doubt you would've heard from the brand. It's called Flevosap, and it's a mixture of several local pear varieties such as Doyenne du Comice and Conference. It has been filtered (my guess, because it only has a little residue on the bottom of the bottle when you leave it for a few hours) and pasteurised at 85 °C (185 °F). Checking the label, I saw it actually doesn't contain any vitamin C, but 1% lemon juice as a preservative.

Edit: I've read elsewhere on the forum that a lot of people are having a hard time getting good pear juice. Fortunately, my country is blessed with lots of apple and pear orchards. Unfortunately, there is zero interest here for ciders and perries, which just doesn't make sense to me. Just over the border in France people love ciders and perries. Over the other border in Germany you've got Apfelwein. And across the North Sea lies England, with its famous Cornish ciders. But here, only Strongbow and Jillz are readily available :banghead: Which is why I'm brewing it myself.

Oh, one more thing: I'm planning on using the slurry for Skeeter Pee after racking. Do you guys reckong that'll be okay?