Peary Questions

[I_B_Mongo]

I have the opportunity to get some free pears, and I thought I'd try my hand at making a peary.
As I've never made one, I figured I'd refer to the pros.

What do I need to do to prep the fruit? I don't have a press, nor do I have access to one. How much fruit do I need? I'd like to make a 5 gallon batch. How much sugar do I add? What type of yeast is best?

Sorry, lots of questions, but like I said-never done this before.
Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

[RobWalker]

You could blend them, but this will take a LONG time and you want to be sure that you're removing the seeds too. Have a look into building a home made press, they're not difficult and you'll get the best results. If you give a few bottles of your perry to whoever gave you the pears, you might get the same opportunity next year.

A lot of people use campden, don't boil it as it'll come out cloudy if you do. You don't NEED to add sugar (imo, cider/perry are best at their natural juice sugar levels) but just take your OG and if you want it higher, go for higher. I wouldn't go to the effort of pressing 5 gallons of pears to sugar them up though..

as for yeast, refer to this; https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f32/results-juice-yeast-sugar-experiments-83060/

 

[I_B_Mongo]

Rob, thanks for the tips! I'll be sure to give the pear owners a few bottles to keep access to the pears. How much fruit per gallon do I need? I've heard with wine its 6#/gallon, but pears aren't as juicy as grapes-so didn't know if I needed to up the ammount or not.

 

[RobWalker]

14-16 pounds of apples per gallon, so i'd imagine it's much the same for pears.

 

[frydogbrews]

most tend to get less juice out of pears than appleas usually. best bet is wait for them to ripen, don't try to press them when they are still hard.
you know that point when you bite into a pear and it is so ripe that juice goes down your chin? thats when you press them. if you do that, you shoudl get more juice than from apples, as i have never in my life bitten into an apple and had juice run down.
one other point to note is that pears tend to throw off even more hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg smell) than apples do, so prepare for it. a little is normal, but 3/4 through fermentation, it might be a good idea to stir the heck out of it to get all that sulfide to gas out of the beverage. otherwise, you might have the situation i currently have in my latest keg of peary. tastes good, but can't get past the gross smell when you go to take a drink!