pears and more pears

[fullhouse]

picked up 3 milk crates of pears from a friends tree,im guessing this to be about 2 bushels? can get more the tree is loaded
i have them all laid out on a table tring to get them as ripe as i can
then i plan to quarter them up by offset cuts and core one of the quarters
then freeze and thaw to prepare for mashing them up
i have 2 32L fermentors empty
want to pot still the ferment slow to keep flavor

anyone have a guess how much sugar i should add to get the best quality?
also how much pear mash to each fermenter?

[Dnderhead]

pears are about 11% so say you use 30lb in a 5 gallon ferment? ,that will give you 3.3 lb of sugar.
so a lb of sugar per gallon will give you about 10% that should be a good start.

[HolyBear]

I bet that'll be some good stuff...

[fullhouse]

Thanks Dnder !...about what i was thinking from reading others posts ...but wasnt quite sure

[Dnderhead]

id use ec1116 yeast and a rather cool ferment.
single run,,discard heads ,,save hearts,,add feints to next run.

[frozenthunderbolt]

depending on the smell/quantity of pulp left behind after fermenting you could try piggybacking a sugarhead on the leftovers - sort of a pear grappa - double distill it and get a light pear vodka perhaps?

[Dnderhead]

if you ferment on skins there wont be much to what is left in the fermenter.iv never found its worth the time.grappa was made with what was left over after "stomping" the grapes .basically the grapes was put in a big tub,,walked on to squash,,the juice was drained off.
(stepping on grapes is not a efficient way of "pressing" so a lot of juice was left)
all the leftovers was put in another tub to ferment.nothing was added.after fermenting, drained and distilled.

[fullhouse]

after spreading the pears out on a table to ripin up a bit more ...2day i chunked and 1/4ed them ended up with a 5 gal bucket of chunks and 1/4s to put in the freezer...that was a task, with 4 freezers between my mom and me, getting a 5 gal bucket into one of them... was a task in itself! few days to freeze and then moving on!

[schume]

Good luck with the pears. I have a very "fruitful" tree that gives me about 300+ pounds of pears each year. They should be done here in a few weeks.

Work with diluting/blending the final product. I lost my notes from last years pear batch, but I recall there being a significant difference between 40% and 30%. 30%-28% range really opened things up, allowing the pear essences to come through. I used the 1116 yeast, but I don't remember the amount of sugar added.

Good luck and keep us posted.