First TC, have i got it right?

[dionferguson]

I've been doing a little reading on TC and am thinking about giving a pear TC a go so am i right in thinking all i need are the following ingredients

pear juice, just normal juice you get in the supermarkets?
a blended/shredded pear
a strong cup of tea (can someone explain why?)
sugar/honey
cider/champagne/lager yeast

and that will do it? how much honey would i need?

what is the best thing to do to prevent it tasting dry? and would i be better off fermenting it at a lower temp? hence the lager yeast

[arturobandini]

Recipe looks good and you should end up with a nice strong brew.

The cup of strong black tea is to add Tannin to the must (brew juice!) to prevent the finally brew having no mouthfeel and becoming too thin and insipid. Funnily enough Pears have a certain amount of tannin in them like conference pears (hard, thin and brown/green). If you're adding blended fruit then try and core it first as the shredded seeds can add undesirable bitterness to your must.

If you have a hydrometer you can measure the specifc gravity of your must before adding extra fermentables like sugar or honey. If you want to reach high gravity ranges like 7% - 12% then sugar and honey will definitely get you there. If you're just after a 4% - 6% Pear Cider then the fruit and juice should be enough providing you're making the must up wholly with juice. If you're diluting juice with water then you should add sugar/honey to your desired original gravity bearing in mind that the final gravity may be as low as 0.990.

With regards sweetness there are a few options open to you. If you don't want a sparkling wine/cider then you can add some sodium metabisulphite (Commonly found in the form of Campden Tablets) to kill the yeast and end the fermentation process at an artificial level which will preserve residual sweetness. If you want a sparkling end product which is not so dry then perhaps using a different yeast may help. Some people report using Ale Yeasts or especially Bread Yeasts work well as they fail to achieve the low fermentation gravity of wine and champagne yeasts. Otherwise you are looking to add some non-fermentable sugar such as Lactose or artificial sweetener to the finished product. You will have to add it little by little to get the correct sweetness. Another more bothersome process would be to add the Campden tablet to stop fermentation whilst sugars remain, rack the brew into a Cornelius keg or similar and add co2 artificially. Most people will either deal with the dry nature of the brew (I really enjoy the dryness luckily) or add some fruit juice to the class after decanting the sparkling drink.

Whatever works for you and don't stress too much!

[dionferguson]

Great thanks for that and i'm looking to make a nice clear sparkling pear cider and strong and it sounds like i've got the ingredients about right and will put into practice what your advising, thanks

[DREADSKIN]

i tried this two months ago with tescos new pear juice. half the bottle was just cloudy thick murk. i only got two ltrs out of it in the end. a failure. and it doesnt taste to good at the mo. gonna leave it for a while. i suggest you get a bag of pears and grate them. dont boil. add sugar water etc and ferment for a week and then civ it all out. im gonna try this as i love pear cider too. just got to find a load of pair on special offer first...

[arturobandini]

I've juiced fresh pears before and i've found you can get completely different looking juices depending on your pear. If you Juice a soft, fleshy, juicy and fat pear (Dessert Pears!) you tend to get a lot of flotsam and jetsam in the juice. Leave the juice for about ten minutes and you'll see a definite separation of the thick, gunky juice and the clear liquid. I've never bought pear juice but I was assuming it would be cleared like apple juice. If it's the cloudy style made from dessert pears then I'd reckon it was full of natural "pear solids" that would cloud up any brew and may be difficult/impossible to clear. As a last resort perhaps use some wine finings or pass through a wine filter to try and settle it out?

Conference Pears (more of a cooking pear) as I mentioned above should be excellent for making Perry as they are hard, slightly bitter yet full of sugar. Their skin is a russet brown and they are tall and thin. The thick brown residues on the skin suggests that there is plenty of tannin in these so that's another added bonus. Perry is actually made from a round bulbous little pear (rather sensibly called Perry) with very similar characteristics to the Conference but I'm not sure how easy Perry Pears are to find whereas Conference Pears are in every supermarket. They are usually the bargain pears (nice and cheap) as they are tough, chewy and take a long time to soften up for eating. Crap for your dessert but fantastic for wine/cider making. If you're fermenting off juice then unless it's cleared i'm guessing it will be pressed dessert pear juice so a thick syrupy cloudy drink not suitable for clear cider.

I fancy having a go at making Perry from Conference pears in the next few months. After a soak in campden tablet treated water to kill wild microbes..... I'm going to core them, freeze them to aid the break down of sugars for yeast and then press them with a fruit press. You can hire a fruit press from most homebrew shops for a deposit and quite a small fee (£5 at my local). Add some pectolase and a cider yeast to the must and ferment as normal. I'm hoping this will give me a decent version of Pear Cider from fresh fruit.

[dionferguson]

Wow! ok then to sum up, stay away from pear juice and use real pears (conference) freeze them de-core them then juice them, wait for seperation and use only the clear perry that is left ha ha sounds like a bit of a chew on to me, got a magnum pear cider kit on the go so i'll see how that turns out first before trying this, ideally i want to make some that is reseambles koppabergs, but cant see that happening any time soon

[arturobandini]

That's just how I intend to try and make some Perry! I'm not sure that the waiting for the juice to separate is going to affect whether or not the Cider would be cloudy or not I was just rambling at that point. I'm sure you could make a perfectly servicable drink out of Pear Juice but it might be very murky due to plenty of gunk in the juice itself.

Good luck anyway and don't let this stuff put you off making Cider as it's one of the easiest and most rewarding things to brew.

[FlourPower]

Would some -ase of some kind not allow a pear juice to be cleared of proteins. Don't wines use pectinase for this kind of thing?