Mixing pear + apple in wine

[MrsCordial]

My father turned up earlier with a load of ripening pears from their tree. I have no idea what variety they are. I know my father's eaten them happily and he has a sweet tooth, so I'm presuming they're a regular eater.

I looked up the pear wine recipe in CJJ Berry but have only about 2/3 of the quantity of pears he stipulates. If I added in apples to make the weight would that make sense? I kind of feel it would, but don't know if I'm committing some kind of pear wine crime.

It feels odd not to be expecting to make perry, but I doubt these are perry pears. If I get the hang of this I'll definitely be looking to make perry and cider next year, when I have a bit more experience.

[Kirk]

No problems mixing them, other then the result will be neither apple or pear. It is not uncommon to add additional fruit to a basic recipe. My last apple was a bit like that, or plain boredom/insanity.

It was an apple wine, about 4lbs apples, but also had 2 pears in it, 2 peaches and 1/2 a large mango I had in the fridge. That has come out nice. Cannot recall what went into the gooseberry that is waiting to be bottled. Mainly gooseberry but I think the liquid was water and a litre of either pear juice or apple and pear juice.

You could run off to a supermarket and simply purchase a carton of pear juice and pour that in.

Add pectalose whatever you do.

[Farmer_Gyles]

My father turned up earlier with a load of ripening pears from their tree. I have no idea what variety they are.

pears all taste the same to me .... they all taste of pear .... i'm not keen on them myself .... but i'll make wine from them anyway ....

I looked up the pear wine recipe in CJJ Berry but have only about 2/3 of the quantity of pears he stipulates. If I added in apples to make the weight would that make sense? I kind of feel it would, but don't know if I'm committing some kind of pear wine crime.

absolutely no crime there - you'll be making a pear and apple wine - perfectly fine
like i said before, make it up as you go along - you'll learn from it - and it won't do any harm whatsoever

It feels odd not to be expecting to make perry, but I doubt these are perry pears. If I get the hang of this I'll definitely be looking to make perry and cider next year, when I have a bit more experience.

you can use any pears for perry - i expect different varieties may produce different tasting wines or perries - but it's all about trying it out and learning ....
this time next year you'll be wondering why you worried so much about mixing things up or varying recipes ....

[MrsCordial]

I know! I want to avoid the huge clangers, and wasting much money. I could have made chutney with all these pears so I'll mind if the wine turns out vile!

I'm going with CJJ Berry's recipe, but adding pectolase as above. His recipe is:

5lbs pears
3lbs sugar
1 gallon water
Juice 2 lemons
Yeast + nutrient

My father made up the weight of pears to 5lbs, so I've added an apple and a greengage, as they were lying around. That's me being daring Just waiting for the fruit and water to come to the boil and sterilising kit.

The only thing that's puzzling me is that this recipe doesn't call for a litre of fruit juice. I am right now the proud owner of a litre each of apple, white grape and red grape juice, but this recipe needs none of it. Should I just go with that? My concern re the chemistry is that if I add it now the wine will be too weak, either weak-tasting or there won't be enough yeast etc to do the fermentation job properly.

[Kirk]

From what I can read none of the CJJB recipes have a juice added, equally the book I have doesn't have Pear in it. Pear is not a heavy flavour, so a pear wine will not come out "strong" anyway.

Suggest either you do not bother with any juice, or add the white grape. The white grape is more to add body to the result, and with pear that may be useful.

Bit late to ask but are you boiling the fruit ?

[MrsCordial]

Hi Kirk. Yes, I did the boil the fruit. I've now got a huge stash of cooked fruit left over which smells like it has quite a lot of life left in it, so just deciding what to do with it.

On the basis that I'm making a gallon of wine, if I'd added juice I would I presume just have decreased the amount of water I used to boil the fruit? If I had a larger overall volume of end product, then just proportionately increase amounts of pectolase, yeast + nutrient?

[Kirk]

You are right, the quantity with juice is 1 gallon, not juice + 1 gallon.

Not sure of the recipe but I would have just chopped the fruit and thrown it into the liquid with yeast+sugar+nutrient and everything and let the whole lot ferment in a bucket, (with the apple and greengage). Stir twice a day and get hands in the squash the fruit.

Used to be the arguement of do you want it to smell of cooked pear or fresh pear, which since I cannot say I find any to smell of the base fruit I tended to ignore.

Not sure if I would say dump the boiled fruit in now and let it all ferment anyway. Cannot think of what you could do with a few pounds of boiled pear actually. (Not sure I actually want ideas either)

Don't need to increase the yeast, what you do is get a starter going, when added to the liquid the yeast starts multiplying, it will multiply to whatever it can, to some extent, immaterial of what amount started out.