Seedling pear wine with seeds

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catfishhoward

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I have two 50-ft pear trees on a property that I just bought and I thought about cutting them down because the pears are small and not worth eating. I figure if I can make wine I might keep one of them but it would be a cold day in h*** that I would pick out all the seeds so why I decided to fix up a batch with the seeds in. I quartered the small mostly hard pears and then boiled them to make my mash, some seeds were cut in half during that process.

I just read that pear seeds can be toxic if eaten in large quantities, is this something I should worry about when I used 5 lb of these pears with seeds to make 2 gallons of wine?
 
If the wine tastes good I'll probably keep one tree next year I'll boil the hard pears to soften them and smash the juices out I screwed up by quartering them and cutting the seeds this year but I really doubt any serious toxins leaked out it's not like I ground them up.
 
How small are the pears? If you prune back the trees and thin the fruit when its young, you may be able to increase fruit size. It takes a long time for a pear tree to bear fruit so I would think about the upside of having fruit before I'd go out and chop them down. If you are going to prune them back, try to take off no more than 1/3 of the canopy each year. Its amazing to watch an old fruit tree respond to pruning, and its a fun hobby.
If you have any pictures of the pears, put them in and perhaps someone could identify them. Also, Pears ripen from the inside out, and it tales a while for them to ripen. Pears are mostly picked unripe and left alone they will ripen just fine. I let my pears get ripe, then freeze them and put in a fruit press whole to get the juice out. I've tried to grind and press ripe pears like I would apples and its a TPITA, the juice wont come out of the mushy pomace. Processing unripe pears produces a flavor I really don't like. I've made pear cider (sort of a perry) for many years and I usually blend it with hard cider or use it when cooking chicken.
 
They are just a little small than a golf ball in size. I just bought the home last year and these trees are about 50' tall so it's really hard to pick them without a cherry picker. I can only reach about 500 of the million the tree has. My neighbor thinks he's got the same type pear and he said his are the size of soft balls? Maybe I should try cutting the top out of the tree to focus its energy in the pears I can reach so they might get bigger?

I decided to continue to bottle the wine and taste later, it can only get better next time.
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You may need both trees for pollination, so chopping one down may prevent the other from fruiting.
 
Please don't cut those beautiful pear trees down! I would work on some type of pruning and thinning as recommended! Extension ladder on the trunk, and regular ladder on the ground will get you some harvest. Also, don't hesitate to "knock" them off the tree and pickup from the ground.
In Kentucky, we call those "Sugar Pears"...aka the Asian Pear.
 
Please don't cut those beautiful pear trees down! I would work on some type of pruning and thinning as recommended! Extension ladder on the trunk, and regular ladder on the ground will get you some harvest. Also, don't hesitate to "knock" them off the tree and pickup from the ground.
In Kentucky, we call those "Sugar Pears"...aka the Asian Pear.
I'm trying not to cut them down, however last year the fruit was not good tasting, small, seedy and so many fruit flies that might cause problems on the 1 acre orchard I just planted. I will look into topping it to cut down the number of fruit and see if it produces larger pear next year?
 
I pressed 2 batches of cider last year. Both included about 150 lbs of various apples and about 30 lbs of pears. Pears have some sorbitol (or is it xylitol?) which adds a little sweetness to the finished product. I let the buckets sit in my garage for a couple weeks to ripen and 'sweat', then ran everything through my hand cranked scratter and press. Both the apples and the pears have seeds of course, but the seeds don't get into the juice. Commercial cider makers don't deseed their fruit. I think that's a needless worry. Whatever you do, don't boil them! That makes a thick pectiny mess that will be hard to get clear and have a cooked flavor.
 
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