This is the first time brewing Pear Wine!
I’m getting back into making wine from scratch after several years of brewing only kit wines. I show both the successes and pitfalls for the beginner wine maker to watch out for during the process.
Check out our Wine Making Category regularly on the our Recipe Blog as we expand our scratch wine making experience.
Have fun and enjoy the process!
Acknowledgement
I modified the ingredient amounts to half from that stated in the recipe book, Recipe, Equipment and Techniques For Wine At Home, p. 68.: Stanley F. Anderson & Dorothy Anderson (1989). Below is my ingredient list, measurements and review of finished product.
A short Pear Wine video documenting my process is available at our Murlo Discovery Channel
Ingredients
1) 14 lbs ripe to mushy pears
2) 3 quarts hot distilled water
3) Enough distilled water to adjust the specific gravity as needed
4) 5 lbs white sugar
5) 1 cup brown sugar
6) 3 lemons
7) 1 tsp yeast nutrient
8) EC-1118 yeast
9) 1/8 tsp Potassium Meta bisulphate to preserve
10) 1 Campden Tablet
11) 2 tsp Fruit Fresh (optional)
Right Image: Pear Stem and Calyx
Instructions
1. Pears should be ripe. I used pears that were bit on the soft side.
2. Sort, wash and cut pears. Remove stem, the black bottom (calyx) piece and core, place in the primary fermenter.
3. It was quicker using my hands to break the pears open removing the seeds given how soft the pears were.
4. Boil 3 qts water, add sugar, Campden tablet, lemon juice, and Fruit Fresh.
5. Mash the pears in the primary fermenter with a potato masher, add boiled water mixture. Stir.
6. Check specific gravity: 1.070. I added another 1 qt of hot water to get more liquid in the mash.
7. Cover fermenter with lid, let cool to 68 -78 degree before adding yeast and yeast nutrient.
8. Add yeast nutrient, stir.
9. Sprinkle yeast on the liquid and cover fermenter.
10. Check temperature daily.
Transfer to Secondary
1) Allow 7-10 days to ferment before transferring the secondary fermenter.
2) Transfer (siphon) the liquid to the secondary when you get the same two specific gravity readings over two days.
3) My S.G. reading was 1.010 after 10 days.
4) I used a strainer and cheese cloth to strain all sediment out, keeping only the liquid.
5) Transfer and add the airlock to the secondary.
6) Leave in secondary fermenter for two months or longer to batch age. Check the water level regularly in the airlock.
7) Sediment will fall to the bottle leaving a clear liquid. I racked (transferred) a second time to eliminate the bulk of sediment.
8) After three month, I bottled the lilac wine into 11, 375 ml bottles.
9) I did a taste test one after four months in the bottle. See tasting result below.
Yield
I was able to get 9, 375 ml bottles from this batch.
Taste Test
– The Pear Wine sat in the bottles for four months before a taste test with family and friends.
– The wine was clear with a slight pear bouquet and tasted fine and one to brew again.
Notes *
1. Ensure the pear tree has not been sprayed with chemicals.
2. Not all the sediment was filtered unfortunately when I thought it had been.
3. The video will show what happened when the airlock was blocked with sediment and exploded!
4. I do need to stabilized the sugar better for my next batch.
5. For my second batch, I may extract the juice from the pears to start the brewing process instead of using pear mash.
6. The video shows the difficulty of not being able to filter out all the mash causing a plugged airlock!
7. Bubbles quickly formed when the bottles were uncorked, almost Champagne like. In fact, one bottle did pop its cork about two months after bottling.
Contact Murlo if you have any questions.
