We're thinking about a spiced pear melomel for our holiday mead this year, and this is a limited trial run: the intent with this batch is to start with a lot of the liquid in primary being pear juice, and perhaps add slided fresh pears in secondary several months before bottling. Xenia suggests Pear Bonding as a good name for this batch, and I agree that it's a good idea.

2017-01-19_21_31_18
Several of the pears juiced for batch 048.

Ingredients in this batch

  • 2 lb. 12 oz. Trader Joe's Mostly Mesquite Honey.
  • 10.27 lb. of fresh pears, not particularly ripe (50:50 mix of Bosc and Bartlett pears), home-juiced, yielding approx. ½ gal pear juice
  • Filtered tap water to 1 gallon
  • 1 packet Lalvin K1V-1116 wine yeast, rehydrated in ⅜ cup of filtered tap water at 98℉
  • 4 x 1 cm. medium-toast American oak cubes, added on 13 March 2017
2017-02-03_18_56_22_HDR
Batch 048 after two weeks of fermentation.

Sanitized everything, then juiced the pears, pouring the juice out of the juicer through a muslin brewing bag, then squeezed the pulp trapped in the brewing bag. This yielded about a half-gallon of juice and pulp. (More pulp ended up in the must than I like, though this didn't become visibly apparent until it separated out later). Poured the honey in, measuring the amount on a scale tared to the weight of the carboy, pear juice, and a funnel. Poured in water to total about three-quarters of a gallon in the carboy. Agitated for three minutes to oxygenate, then filled it to a gallon and shook for another three minutes. Pitched the yeast, then shoved one end of a blowoff tube into the carboy's neck and put the other end under water in a bowl. Labeled the carboy and left it in the kitchen to ferment.

Brew date: 19 January 2017.
Original gravity: 1.114.
Bottling date: 13 April 2017
Final gravity: 1.007.
Estimated ABV: Approx. 14⅔%.

Yield:

  • 4 x 12 oz. bottles
  • 2 x 22 oz. bottles
  • a hydrometer tube's worth of mead

Total: About 97 fl. oz., or 75% of a gallon. (We lost a lot to fibrous pear material that snuck in with the juice.)

Observations

  • 2017-01-20T04:17: There's already carbon dioxide coming from the blowoff hose. Many small bubbles are making their way up the side of the carboy.
  • 2017-01-20T11:52: Fermentation activity has pushed a some of the pear pulp up into the blowoff hose. It's already starting to descend back into the carboy, though. Too bad: if the carboy had been placed above the bowl the blowoff tube empties into, it might have gotten rid of a lot of that pulp.
  • 2017-01-22T16:01: Swapped out the blowoff hose for a fermentation lock: nothing's being pushed out into the blowoff hose any more.
  • 2017-03-13T21:01: Put in some oak cubes.
  • 2017-03-26T18:45: Tasted. Delicious. Still wants more time on oak, though.
  • 2017-04-13: The mead has gone slightly brownish; I don't know whether this is because the vodka in the airlock went low and allowed oxygen to enter, or whether the oak has been in too long, or whether the oak was improperly sanitized in the first place and perhaps contributed some wood dust. I think it tastes perhaps over-oaked, myself, though Xenia doesn't; she tastes it as hot, though, whereas I don't notice that as much. In any case, bottled, yielding 75% of a gallon at around 14%; we'll see how it ages. I still have high hopes for this batch.

Lessons learned

  • The gravity of this particular combination of pear juice and pear pulp was 1.054.
  • Squeezing the pulp in the muslin bag apparently winds up adding pulp to the must.
  • Don't let the airlock run dry.
  • Sanitize oak cubes properly.