Making Wine from Pears and other Fruits

/ hoveysmith

Decanting homemade pear wine.

 

  Pears, peaches, apples, persimmons and other fruits may be used to make homemade wines with relatively simple equipment. The basics include a food-grade fermentation vessel, a recipe book, yeast and a variety of other things that your local vineyard can likely supply.  Although these kits may be purchased by mail from Cabelas, Bass Pro and other outlets, I recommend working with a local wine maker. Many will give a basic class that includes the price of a start-up wine-making kit.

The new pear wine.

  In my case the hard canning pear provided the fruit. In 2010 the trees bore strongly and even after putting up pear sauce, poached pears and making pear pies there were sufficient pears to make gallons of wine. I only did a small batch starting off with 8 pounds of cooked pear sauce, 5 pounds of sugar and let that mix ferment for 6 days. After that the wine was decanted and allowed to ferment from August to January. At that time fermentation had stopped and the mix was no longer yielding gas.  The wine has a pear taste and a bit of a bite.

  The fruit wines are best drunk fairly quickly as they do not keep as well as grape wines. You should plan on consuming them within a year.  I also used the pear pulp after it had fermented to make a pear bread by mixing it with some butter and whole-wheat flour. The Scotch in me would not allow me to discard what was a potentially eatable product.

  I did a short video of the process which is on YouTube and available at the following link if you have any problems watching it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSrw3bcJSsQ,

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