Opps! I guess I’m making some perry

[Srimmey]

my wife and I made a whole boat load of canned pears last months, turns out that 2 of the quarts are fermenting.

I have no flippin idea how, he processed the jars in boiling water for 35 minutes but I’ll be damned if I now how 2 quarts of canned pears that tast like they are about half way through primary.

Some wild yeast must have lived through. We found out because my sister in law gave her quart back to use saying it started hissing and fizzing when she tried to open it. I check all the seals and found 1 more popped and doing the same thing.

I figured.. what the hell? Might as well throw an airlock on em and see what happens. Could have some classic vanilla perry here in a few months.

On the flip side I was already contemplating popping 1 quart and pitching some d47 so hey I guess month nature has my back. The only reason why I think this may have happened is because a few quarts had about an inch too much head space.

 

[Srimmey]

I can never seem to just “leave things be”. Also, I like things that taste good!

For these reasons, I chose to kill off the wild yeast, add some pectin enzymes, topped off with apple cider and pitch some d47.

 

[marc1]

my wife and I made a whole boat load of canned pears last months, turns out that 2 of the quarts are fermenting.

I have no flippin idea how, he processed the jars in boiling water for 35 minutes but I’ll be damned if I now how 2 quarts of canned pears that tast like they are about half way through primary.

Some wild yeast must have lived through. We found out because my sister in law gave her quart back to use saying it started hissing and fizzing when she tried to open it. I check all the seals and found 1 more popped and doing the same thing.

I figured.. what the hell? Might as well throw an airlock on em and see what happens. Could have some classic vanilla perry here in a few months.

On the flip side I was already contemplating popping 1 quart and pitching some d47 so hey I guess month nature has my back. The only reason why I think this may have happened is because a few quarts had about an inch too much head space.

Seems like a good time to examine your canning process and be sure of the problem to avoid food poisoning in the future.

 

[Srimmey]

Seems like a good time to examine your canning process and be sure of the problem to avoid food poisoning in the future.

Definitely! We went over our process carefully and came up with a few possible options as to what happened

1. The jars that had active fermentation had too much head space and were not packed tightly enough.

2. A few small slivers of pear skin remained on the slices. I also added cut vanilla beans and whole cinnamon sticks to each can. Yeast was probably introduced by one of the things listed above.

All that being said though, I though 140 deg f water for 10 minutes was enough pasteurization to kill off yeast. These things sat in boiling water for 35 minutes. I have no idea how yeast colonies lived through that. The internal temp of those jars was probably 190-200 deg f. I will never be so sloppy with my canning head space again buutttt… that pear cider is already smelling real nice!

 

[marc1]

Definitely! We went over our process carefully and came up with a few possible options as to what happened

1. The jars that had active fermentation had too much head space and were not packed tightly enough.

2. A few small slivers of pear skin remained on the slices. I also added cut vanilla beans and whole cinnamon sticks to each can. Yeast was probably introduced by one of the things listed above.

All that being said though, I though 140 deg f water for 10 minutes was enough pasteurization to kill off yeast. These things sat in boiling water for 35 minutes. I have no idea how yeast colonies lived through that. The internal temp of those jars was probably 190-200 deg f. I will never be so sloppy with my canning head space again buutttt… that pear cider is already smelling real nice!

Heat conduction through air is not nearly as good as through water. If a lot of things were sticking out of the liquid because of the headspace that could be your problem. Did you have 1-2" of water covering the tops of the jars during a good boil?
Did you hot pack? I looked in my preservation book and hot pack was recommended for regular pears and required for spiced.
USDA recommends hot pack only, and acidification if they are Asian pears:
https://www.healthycanning.com/wp-c...plete-Guide-to-Home-Canning-2015-revision.pdf
I'm glad this worked out for you, it could have been a real mess if they had been put away somewhere unseen for a few months, although I would not have been so bold as to taste canned food that was bubbling.

 

[Srimmey]

Heat conduction through air is not nearly as good as through water. If a lot of things were sticking out of the liquid because of the headspace that could be your problem. Did you have 1-2" of water covering the tops of the jars during a good boil?
Did you hot pack? I looked in my preservation book and hot pack was recommended for regular pears and required for spiced.
USDA recommends hot pack only, and acidification if they are Asian pears:
https://www.healthycanning.com/wp-c...plete-Guide-to-Home-Canning-2015-revision.pdf
I'm glad this worked out for you, it could have been a real mess if they had been put away somewhere unseen for a few months, although I would not have been so bold as to taste canned food that was bubbling.

I had good coverage over the cans and the syrup covered all the fruit inside but I think your spot on about the extra air from the head space reducing heat inside the jar.

I don’t even know what hot packing is… so I definitely didn’t do it. I just jammed those suckers in and covered with the syrup.

 

[marc1]

I had good coverage over the cans and the syrup covered all the fruit inside but I think your spot on about the extra air from the head space reducing heat inside the jar.

I don’t even know what hot packing is… so I definitely didn’t do it. I just jammed those suckers in and covered with the syrup.

Hot packing is covered on page 1-12 of that USDA booklet. You heat the material to be canned before putting it in the jar, say, by boiling it for a few minutes. This in in comparison to raw packing where the food is put in uncooked and then covered with hot liquid.

 

[Srimmey]

Looking for advice on calculating abv…

Noticed little to no airlock activity this evening so I measured the cider’s gravity. Found it at 1.000.

I decided to rack it off the pears and yeasty lees. Then added some calcium bicarbonate to reduce the acidity and topped off with more cider.

Added approximately 1/3rd of a gallon to bring the SG 1.014. The OG was 1.056, not counting the fermentation that happened from the wild yeast in the jar (which was very little).

I understand more sugars were added but brew was also diluted. How do I calculate abv now?

Planning to go down to somewhere around 1.000 - 0.996