Pear processing > 100#

Greetings,

I am curious as to how you guys prep your pears for making wine. Whenever I make 5 gallons or less, I remove the stem, the bottom thing, slice in half, core, chop roughly, then mash.

I have about 130# of pears to do. After the first 35# or so, my knife hand is killing me.

I am thinking that maybe just de-stemming and removing the bottom thing and bad spots, rough chop then mash would be fine? Leaving the seeds and the core.

The pear cores are super soft. I actually eat the core and all when munching on them. Tossing out only the stem.

I am not positive what variety they are. Someone said that they are a yellow pear, but I am sure that there are many yellow varieties out there. They are sweet. Grown about 10 miles north of Green Bay, WI. They don't seem to brown very fast when sliced open and left.


What do you guys think? I heard that the seeds will impart a bitter taste, but I don't know how true it is. Or to what degree.

Thanks!

 

I slice them in half, sometimes removing the stem as I go. I may cut them up a bit further, but that is it. I then mash them, trying not to crush seeds. That is it, but I have only done it twice. Last year I had to freeze them ahead of time, I have heard that helps a lot of fruit prior to pressing or mashing.

 

Freezing helps a lot. I usually try to freeze, but no room for this much here.

Has the wine turned out good with the seeds in? No tastes from them?

 

I know it may be a little late, but House of Homebrew in Green Bay will rent out their cider press. They also have a couple de-stemmed crushers for rent. I think they are around $25 a day. Not all that much when compared to a couple weeks of suffering carpal tunnel symptoms.

 

Ha! No kidding. I would like to ferment the solids though. Peel too.


Not totally too late. But, a fella from work enlightened me on what he does. He uses a peeler/corer. I will use the peeler for closer inspection, and toss the peel in too anyway.

Thanks though!

 

here you go OP.

 

This is a great bit.

Love the comments about turning it hard, the guy responds saying he leaves the bottle caps on loose!!

No one wants Apple bombs....or pear bombs!

 

I haven't noticed a problem with seeds but my pressing method, a wine bottle, didn't exactly exert a lot of pressure to begin with. I have a press for this year though, we will see if that makes a difference on the seeds.

 

The way I see it, seeds/stems = tannin. I wouldn't worry about it.

How are you crushing/pressing them? If you don't have a lot of equipment already and don't want to spend much, I just learned of the sharpened paint stirrer + drill method to crush the fruit. You could follow that up with a poor man's double bucket press (bucket filled with water inside another bucket with holes in the bottom).

Whatever you do, let us know how it turns out!

 

Paint stirrer! Great idea! I'm too late to read though...

I destem and de-bellybutton, slice in half, gut each side, toss in bucket. Towards the end it went about that fast too. When the bucket got enough in it, I'd whip out the bread knife and slice em all up until my arm throbbed. Then used the mash potato masher deal to finish them off. Super pain in the arse. After I sanitized my arm, I would squeeze any large chunks that slipped through the process.

 

That is cool.