peer wine ?

[hectorgg]

Hey everyone,

I went pear picking with my wife and son today, and the man who ran it GAVE me five gallons of pear cider for free. We talked about making pear wine, so he said, "Here... Take some and give it a try!" Cider tastes great!

I took the five gallons home, added 6 oz of cranberry raisins, and 9 cups of dextrose to kick up the gravity, which was at 1.025. Got it to 1.072 (ran out of dextrose). The plastic gallon milk jugs weren't bloated, and he had them stored in a commercial freezer at about 34F. So I didn't suspect any wild yeast fermentation had started.

Anyway... I pitched Lalvin D47 yeast and basically winged the cranberry-raisin idea. Cut them up, pasteurized them, and tossed them in. I have no idea what I'm gonna get, but am super curious how it comes out.

My question is on yeast. I rehydrated it in the must at 104F and pitched. I put the airlock on and got a burp off it within a minute! It's burping very, very, very slowly. Huh? The yeast should be in the lag phase... what's with all the burping? I'm wondering if letting it warm up to 76F kicked off wild yeast fermentation. Then I began wondering if the refractometer gravity reading is off due to residual alcohol from prior fermentation. If so, the D47 yeast will be competing with an unknown yeast. If that happens, what will happen?

 

[bernardsmith]

Hi hectorgg - and welcome. I am speaking out of ignorance here so take what I say with a very large pinch of salt, but a gravity of 1.025 from pear juice sounds incredibly low. Sounds as if this juice had been fermenting - despite what you say about the containers not being swollen. Did you taste the juice before you pitched the yeast? Here's what I would do. Extract a few drops of juice from a pear you picked and measure the Brix with your refractometer. Multiply that by 4 for a reasonable approximation to the SG. If it is only 1.025 then those are low sugar pears. If the gravity is closer to 1.050 then your assumption is correct.

As to what might happen when D47 competes with indigenous yeasts... I suspect that D47 will take over - it is likely to create an environment that best suits it but that said, D47 plays nicely with other yeasts. It ain't known as a killer variety (EC 1118 for example).