Pear cider wine how to

[CrealCritter]

That is very interesting about freezing the fruit to help the peptic enzyme and yeast work better. I freeze the fruit when I want to make peach spreads and pear jelly. I started making peach sauce once and got interupted so I threw teh fruit in the freezer until I could get to it the next weekend. It turned out really juicy and smooth afterwards so that is what I usually do now.

Yep freezing/thawing works well for juice extraction

 

[CrealCritter]

That is very interesting about freezing the fruit to help the peptic enzyme and yeast work better. I freeze the fruit when I want to make peach spreads and pear jelly. I started making peach sauce once and got interupted so I threw teh fruit in the freezer until I could get to it the next weekend. It turned out really juicy and smooth afterwards so that is what I usually do now.

My understanding and I'm no scientist, heck I didn't even stay in a holiday inn express last night. But freezing ruptures the pulp, making fruit more juicy upon thawing. In wine making you really need to add pectic enzyme to break up the pectin in the fruit, unless your making jello shots

 

[CrealCritter]

Time to fire up the fermentation, my favorite part of wine making except for bottling.

I added 3 tea spoons of pectic enzyme early this morning. Its been about 26 hours since making up the must, so time to pitch the yeast and get this bad boy rolling.

I grabbed my yeast starter and opened the lid, there's a little activity in there. Generally I like to see more but the house has been cool it is October after all and we don't turn on the heat until Halloween.

Next close the jar up tight and sake it well, to cause the yeast to go into suspension. Then gently unscrew the ring and listen, if there's a lot of pressure release, the yeast is alive, also evidenced by lots of white foam. Now just pour the yeast into the must. No need to stir the must afterwards, the yeast knows what to do... Start eating and reproducing and making me some alcohol and esters and other tasty things.

Now take a hydrometer reading, this is known as the starting or original gravity (SG or OG). It tells you how much fermentable sugars are in the must. Otherwise how much food for the yeast to eat, thereby producing alcohol to drink.

If you noticed i added 10 lbs of sugar to the must but the recipe called for 12 lbs. 12 lbs and just the can of wine base would have gave me about 1.080 on the hydrometer. But because i added 3 lbs of ripe pears and froze & thawed them and added petic ensyme, i got a lot of sugar from my ripe pears.

We'll call the OG 1.105 which is awesome... This means i have the potential for some HIGH OCTANE cider wine

Now calculate the potential alcohol by volume (ABV) using this handy on line calculator for wine (not beer). 1.105 puts us around 15.6% ABV, that is if we let the yeast totally eat themselves out of house and home and have a totally dry wine. Drier than water which is right around 1.000 OG. So yes... The yeast will actually make this must less sweeter than water which no one would want to drink. Yeast will eat most everything, even the fermentable sugars out of water. They take their job pretty seriously!

Now all you have to do is recover the primary fermenter with a clean tee-shirt for a couple of days until the yeast gets rolling real well. This keep bugs out but still give the yeast plenty of oxygen to get rolling. A postal rubber band stretched around the top of the bucket keeps the shirt in place pretty well.

 

[CrealCritter]

After a little less than 24 hours, the pectic enzyme and yeast is rolling along pretty well, lots of bubbles. It smells very good in the room where the primary fermenter is, like pears and yeast.

Now is a good time to put the lid and air lock on the primary fermenter. Sanitize the clean lid a spray bottle with star San works well. Insert the air lock and fill about 3/4 full of sanitizer. After a couple of minutes the air lock should start bubbling which mine has, pretty violently.

Its interesting to note in wine making that the alcohol produced by the yeast will get to a level high enough to kill off the pectic enzyme. You can read more about petic enzyme here --->http://winemakersacademy.com/pectic-enzymes-wine/

Now that we have the must fired up, there's nothing to do now but let it be for a about a week. When we'll check its progress with a hydrometer and see how much alcohol it's produced. And determine if it's time to rack into a 5 gallon glass carboy secondary fermenter.

 

[CrealCritter]

friday evening 08 Nov I racked this pear cider wine into a 5 gallon glass carboy. It was at 1.010 on the hydrometer. Its a flipping pulpy mess and will need to be racked again soon. I racked over top of 5 teaspoons of yeast nutrient because I noticed a slight smell of sulfur. This is pretty common when asking yeast to do a big ferment job like this one. Seems they run out of a critical nutrient and start letting of sulfur gas. By feeding the yeast, yeast nutrient. They come back around after a few days and are healthy again. It's almost like trying to read the leaves in your vegetable garden to figure out what nutrient is lacking.

Pics
Gravity 1.010

Pulpy mess of a wine right now but, I'll fix that in due time. Tastes good though.

 

[CrealCritter]

Racked this pear cider wine today (Dec 1). It's gravity was at .992 which puts the alcohol by volume at 15.4%. Yep some more you'll get all jacked up juice . The pulp (lees) was a good 1/2" thick in the bottom of the carboy and there still a few pieces of pear skins floating on the top. I decided since it was still pretty messy to add 5 table spoons of benonite (clay clarifying agent) and 6 oz of sugar and a pint of hot water. You mix the benonite up in boiling water add sugar so it doesn't effect the gravity by just adding plain water.

Here's the mess in the bottom of the carboy. More yeast for the septic tank.

Here's what it looks like racked into a clean 5 gallon carboy, with benonite mixed in. It should drop somewhat clear in a few days to a week.

Taste test... At this stage it's still fermenting and very dry .992. But it had a wonderful pear and alcohol aroma. Besides for the dry tartness (.992) It has a wonderful heavy pear flavor and the esters produced by the cider yeast marry very well with pear, alcohol content and chestnut tannins. It's also warming on the way down because of the high alcohol content. But so far so good, fingers crossed, I think this will turnout to be a wonderful wine, when it comes time to back sweeten and finish. that is, if I don't mess it up.

 

[CrealCritter]

My pear cider wine has finished fermenting, ain't it pretty? It's time to rack into a new clean & sterile glass carboy again. I'll post more then, there's no big hurry though it's wine after all.

 

[bambi]

beautiful !!! Hope for post pics when you bottle it. Have you thought about making labels for that gorgeous wine of yours?

 

[CrealCritter]

beautiful !!! Hope for post pics when you bottle it. Have you thought about making labels for that gorgeous wine of yours?

Label yes... and i'll get a pic or two when bottle.

Any suggestions for improvement of the label, are much appreciated

 

[YourRabbitGirl]

The first step is to prepare your pears.
Wash and de-stem them. Then core and chop them into chunks, you want no seeds or core what so ever, but chicken don't mind the cores. Be sure to leave the skins on.
View attachment 12453

Place the chunks in a plastic baggie and weigh them. You'll need at least 3lbs
View attachment 12454

Next, crush the chucks in the baggie, then seal the baggie and place in the deep freezer to freeze up solid (overnight). Freezing fruit causes the pulp to rupture releasing juice, which making it easier for the pectic enzyme to break down and the yeast to devour and convert into alcohol and other tasty compounds.

Sounds pretty complex. I hope it will turn out great... I hope my husband can make our own wine too. some good wine are too expensive... making our own really does sound amazing..