Pear wine possibilities?

[Kathy7268]

I recently finished making some pear butter. In the cooking process (a LOT of pears, maybe 1-3/4 bushels), I used about 1 cup of water total and ended up with approximately a gallon of pear juice. It is divine! Can I somehow use this to make pear wine? I am a beginner and not comfortable at all winging it, so need some specific direction. Additionally, if need be, could I use some of the pear butter (it is unsweetened, and also spectacular)?

I have determined that the pears are Kieffer pears (hard as rocks, but incredibly sweet and flavorful when cooked down).

Thank you for any help!!

Kathy

 

[jblaschke]

A little late for your needs, but pear wine/cider is traditionally called perry. Dessert/eating pears aren't strongly-flavored enough to make high-quality perry, but can certainly be fermented. Traditional perry pears are too tannic and/or acidic to be eaten out of hand. You can Google up a bunch of recipes. Here's a simple one https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/homebrew-recipe/perry-recipe-of-the-week-simple-perry/

 

[Kathy7268]

Thank you, Jayme. Actually, because I wasn't quite sure what to do and was in a bit of a rush/bind, I froze the juice, so your comment is timely!

 

[jblaschke]

Well, there you go! To extract more tannin (and flavor) I'd probably crush the fruit and add skins and all to the secondary. I tried a sort of pear melomel a few years ago with dessert pears and despite using a pretty high ratio of juice, the final flavor was disappointingly thin: http://jlbgibberish.blogspot.com/2013/06/134365-fruit-press.html

We moved to a new house two years ago with room to plant fruit trees. I've got three pear in the ground, but alas, they're still too young to fruit. Eventually, I plan to order perry pear scion wood from the USDA station at Corvallis and see which can survive the disease and climate pressures of Texas to bear fruit. That's a long-term project, but it seems that nobody has attempted to grow perry pears in the southern U.S. (if they did, they didn't bother to document the effort online).

 

[Kathy7268]

Dessert pears are super sweet, but so mildly flavored, I can see why the wine turned out lacking luster.

I hope your orchard is bountiful!! I only have a sour cherry in my yard, but at 3 years it only produces a handful of fruit at this time. Maybe one day.....

 

[jblaschke]

At the previous house, it took 10 years before all of the various trees I'd planted came into bearing. And then we sold it and I've had to start over again.

As they say, the best time to plant a fruit tree is 10 years ago.

 

[PKnotlost]

Pear wine isn't "pearie" at all.

 

[Anamalier]

Thank you, Jayme. Actually, because I wasn't quite sure what to do and was in a bit of a rush/bind, I froze the juice, so your comment is timely!

Then you can still use it. You could do a spiced-honey pear wine. Nutmeg, cinnamon, some honey. You could make a fruit wine with a few chosen fruits.

I am new to this, but I use a book called "Making Wild Wines and Meads" By Vargas/ Gulling I like the book because the recipies are all for a 1 gallon size, which you can do with an old jug wine bottle rather than go out and buy a big carboy. Thus you could do 1 gallon spiced pear, 1 gallon pear cranberry, 1 gallon pear-honey mead.

 

[Anamalier]

At the previous house, it took 10 years before all of the various trees I'd planted came into bearing. And then we sold it and I've had to start over again.

As they say, the best time to plant a fruit tree is 10 years ago.

This is why I love berry bushes, like black berry, raspberry, even grape vines.

 

[jblaschke]

This is why I love berry bushes, like black berry, raspberry, even grape vines.

Well, it's not exactly an either-or proposition, is it? I've got several types of blackberry, goji berry, pineapple guava, muscadine, passion fruit and agarita growing in addition to my various trees, with plans for goumi and at least four different grape varietals in the future. And that doesn't count all the wild dewberries and prickly pear that grow around here. If things work out, I should have something ripening pretty much every month of the year.

 

[jblaschke]

I am new to this, but I use a book called "Making Wild Wines and Meads" By Vargas/ Gulling

I've got that book, too! I can't recall ever making one of their recipes to the letter, but I've used it as inspiration on multiple occasions.

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi Kathy and welcome. You say that you are a beginner so I may be repeating stuff you are very familiar with.
Check the specific gravity of your pear juice. You have frozen it so you have one great advantage. If you allow the juice to thaw and as it thaws you gently collect the thawing and so collect the first third of the juice (the next two thirds still frozen then you will have collected almost all the sugars that would be in the pears and so you will have concentrated that juice without boiling off the water. My guess is that the gravity of that juice (the density due to the sugar) will be around 1.075 or thereabouts) and fermented dry this will give you a wine of about 10% alcohol by volume (ABV) which is fine. But not only will all the sugars be in this smaller volume of juice but just about all the flavor molecules will be too so if a concern was that pear wine might be rather thin in flavor this is one way to concentrate that flavor...

 

[Kathy7268]

Then you can still use it. You could do a spiced-honey pear wine. Nutmeg, cinnamon, some honey. You could make a fruit wine with a few chosen fruits.

I am new to this, but I use a book called "Making Wild Wines and Meads" By Vargas/ Gulling I like the book because the recipies are all for a 1 gallon size, which you can do with an old jug wine bottle rather than go out and buy a big carboy. Thus you could do 1 gallon spiced pear, 1 gallon pear cranberry, 1 gallon pear-honey mead.

I have that book too. But we've found that making 1 gallon batches is a bit cumbersome. Soooo much easier to work with 5 or 6 gallons at a shot, but in this instance I only have 1 gallon of juice, so that's what's going to happen.

 

[Kathy7268]

Excellent words of advice!! Thank you!

 

[MindenMan]

I too was going to mention freeze concentration of the juice. The other option is to ferment it first and then freeze concentrate your wine, this will give you something more along the lines of a cordial or a schnapps with a strong flavor and an elevated ABV%.