First Perry from scratch (with pics!)

So, I have two pear trees that make tons of pears every year. Here's just a few from the first picking. Its about 250 pounds of fruit. There's no way to can or make jelly out of all of this so....PERRY (pear cider) it is!

The first thing that you have to do when making perry from scratch, is crush the fruit. I originally thought I would save some cash and just crush the pears in a bucket with my 8 lb mall. Bad plan. If you want to make perry, go ahead and buy a fruit crusher. BTW, that's not my feet but my SWMBOs pretty toes.

Here's the real fruit crusher. You can see it attached to the table on the right side along with the fruit press on the ground. The pressed fruit is discarded in the wheelbarrow and it comes out of the crusher in a neat cylinder when done correctly.

Here is my son operating the fruit press.

At the end of the day, you end up with about 5 gallons of juice for every 100 lbs of fruit.

Juice ready to become PERRY!

Here's a close up of the fruit after it has been pressed.

I have made about 25 gallons of perry this year and still have fruit on the trees. It's very easy to do if you have the right equipment. The crusher and press together were about 400 dollars but that is the extent of the investment. Excluding that cost, you can make perry for about $2.00 per 5 gallon batch if you have trees in that produce fruit.

Great summer activity

I just did my first home juiced batch of apples and I found freezing then thawing softened the fruit up plenty for juicing. I seemed to get a pretty good yield with no crushing at all. Obviously this only works if you have a lot of extra freezer space

What kind of pears are you using? I assume they are like apples to the extent that some are better for hard perry making than others, etc. Hope it turns out great! Thanks for sharing.

I did this for the first time on a large scale last fall. We have an ancient, huge, winter pear tree that is always loaded, so I decided to see just how much fruit I could pick. I froze them until I had time to crush/ferment over thanksgiving(cu. ft. chest freezer can hold about 150lb apparently). Used a 10 ton press to crush.

~300lb pears
~18 gallons pressed juice
~1lb/gal sugar to get near 1.085
fg 1.009 past two years in a row.

I read somewhere there are unfermentable sugars that cause pear to always finish with high gravity. They also have huge sediment issues over time, so I used bentonite this year to try and combat that.

I do a 50/50 pear/ apple cider with store bought that finishes around 1.008-1.009 so I'm gratified to see some confirmation of that.


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If you put a spacer in the middle of your press and use 2 press bags you can get more juice, not sure why multiple spacers make it better but the first time you do it that way it really presses the pulp much better than just doing it all in one bag. Our perry from a wild tree last year has an interesting hint of black pepper and lots of body. WVMJ

I didn't even use a bag WVMJ, I just pressed them just as you would apples. With the amount of pears that I had to process, efficiency wasn't an issue but I will probably try your trick next year just to see what happens. I also didn't sweeten the juice prior to pitching so my cider will probably finish at about 4%. I may back sweeten with splenda. Has anyone ever tried that with good results?

Well, It's been about 2 months and I have the Perry in kegs and carbed. It still has a fairly noticeable sulfur smell but the taste is crisp. The smell definitely makes it undrinkable so I hope it continues to mellow. I kind of expected it to matu
re around Thanksgiving.

Have you tried scrubbing it out by cycling some co2 through your batch?


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I've never made perry, but I assume that it would benefit from a malolactic fermentation which can be accelerated by buying a malolactic culture and nutrient and pitching it about now, correct?


Adam

Phug, I will definitely try that. The sulfur smell is dissipating rather quickly now and the flavor is more crisp. I had originally figured that this would be good to drink around Thanksgiving and that seems to be fairly accurate. It tastes like a chardonnay with slight sulfur undertones at the moment.

Beirtourist, I haven't tried your idea but it seems to be clearing up on its own. I'll wait a bit more and if it continues to improve I'll post it here. I think it will be great in a few more weeks!

I agree with the spacers and putting the fruit in something similar to a BIAB bag. Your fruit looks like it could use more chopping, did you let the pears age a while after picking to soften up?
What kind of yeast did you use? What temp during fermentation?
Just wondering where the sulphur notes are coming from.

Madscientist, the fruit chopper does the trick. I tried to manually crush the first batch but that was not a pleasant experience. I did not age the pears beyond picking them when they were ripe. If did three batches over three weeks and found the last two batches to be more productive as for crushing and yield. I fermented on batch at RT which was about 75 deg F and the other two batches I put in me refermenator at 65 deg F.

We have the same crusher, does and ok job, does toss out some bigger pieces but overall gets it done and easier than having to chop it up first and shove it down a garbage disposal crusher. We got a 3/4 inch drill press head and a shaft for a 1/2 inch drill to fit it on from a machinst webpage, now we can hook up a good drill and go much faster than that silly assed wheel that comes with it. I want to put an electric motor on ours but first have to find a wheel to fit the shaft.

WVMJ

Great idea with the 1/2 in drill! I'm not sure why I hadn't thought of that!

We had to get a drill press head big enough to fit it but would then fit on a 1/2 inch shank, all pretty cheap. Only concern is the weight on the shaft is probably going to make it start to wobble one day, but we plan on upgrading to maybe pulley wheels as a winter project. WVMJ

Thanks for the Pic!