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The local cidery is pressing Bartlett's today, and they are offering me the pomace, all the mashed up pears that have been pressed. I'm going to get about 50 pounds. I've got a 50 gallon stainless fermenter that I'm going to throw them in. I was thinking about adding some sugar and yeast nutrient, using bread yeast, and letting her rip. Any advice?

.Haven't tried pressed out fruit although been offered it for the hauling away cider time at apple orchards Either way if it were me Id grind it.Otherwise your gonna have chunks of fruit that's just soaking up the sugar water your adding back.Ferment it out and you should have a brandy like sugar likker.Id also invert the sugar first to help hide the sugar taste.And pour boiling hot over ground up fruit pulp.Id think the end version be a fruity approach to what the All brand wheat germ or Gerber does as grain like for other sugar washes If ya try it let us know.

Beerlover88 wrote:The local cidery is pressing Bartlett's today, and they are offering me the pomace, all the mashed up pears that have been pressed. I'm going to get about 50 pounds. I've got a 50 gallon stainless fermenter that I'm going to throw them in. I was thinking about adding some sugar and yeast nutrient, using bread yeast, and letting her rip. Any advice?

Well, 'grappa' has been made for hundreds of years;

"Grappa is a uniquely Italian drink. Traditionally, made from pomace, the discarded grape seeds, stalks, and stems that are a by-product of the winemaking process"

(lifeinitaly.com)
so it seems you could probably make a "grappa" from the pear pomace.
Maybe the way you said but I'd be inclined to look up the grappa methods, and then have a go.

But the distillation method would probably be different, unless you can't organize a basket or thumper the way I describe; If you can't then maybe you will need to add some water as well as some sugar, enough so that you can 'handle' the wash...

I think they use a pot still and put the fermented pomace in a basket, with some water in the boiler below it.
(I've got one I could use, it is a rice cooker basket that normally goes in a stock pot;
though it would be tricky if your pot still is based on a keg, you would probably have to set up a stock pot type boiler
or maybe a thumper of that type, that is, with a lid you can remove to fill it with pulp/ pomace....).

Or instead of fermenting the pomace for grappa you could try filling the basket/ thumper with pomace and partly filling the boiler with say 40% spirit and distilling so that the spirit vapour attracts the flavour from the pomace...

Anyway if I had it I would try some of these ideas.

Another possibility; taste the pomace and IF there is a lot of flavour in it, macerate some in neutral alcohol, to get pear schnapps; and layer some of it with sugar
(you can do this with the fruit left after the maceration but might want to check if there is flavour left in it)
which will draw out the flavour and turn to syrup, (you can do this a second time if there is sufficient flavour left)
and add the syrup back to the pear schnapps for a pear liqueur.

it will make a difference how it was pressed, grappa originally came from "foot" pressed/stomped grapes.
then as presses came about they were more efficient,less juice left ,so some water had to be added. now some are using " bladder" presses and almost nothing is left.

Talked with the guy today. He saved me two five gallon buckets worth of pomace, and I'm picking them up tonight. I think I'll bring them home, add water, sugar and yeast, and let it rip. I'll call this experiment 1, because he says he has two more pressings of pears coming up before he moves on to apples, so it will be interesting to see how it works. I've got to do some more research as to how to distill it. Wish I had a thumper, because if I did, I'd probably try freezing some of the pomace and charge the thumper with pomace and some low wines...

Id grind those pears beerlover.

Picked up the pomace on Wednesday night, put it in the cooler overnight. Yesterday, mixed up 40 lbs of sugar, added the pomace, which had already been ground pretty fine. Added water to about a 1.080 gravity (~25 gallons) and a cup and a half of yeast. Fermenting really good right now and smells great!

Gravity today is 1.000, still fermenting. Still smells great! Any thoughts on what kind of run to do? One slow run? Can you double distill fruit brandies, or do you lose all the flavor?

Beerlover88 wrote:Gravity today is 1.000, still fermenting. Still smells great! Any thoughts on what kind of run to do? One slow run? Can you double distill fruit brandies, or do you lose all the flavor?

Your choice. You will lose some flavor with a second run but not all of it. I prefer to do two runs but I reserve a gallon or two of the fermented wash and add that into the low wines for the spirit run. That should add back some of the flavor lost by doing two runs. I just did this on a grape juice brandy yesterday and while I haven't made the cuts yet, a sample taste from mid run has a very promising flavor.

Braz wrote:

Beerlover88 wrote:Gravity today is 1.000, still fermenting. Still smells great! Any thoughts on what kind of run to do? One slow run? Can you double distill fruit brandies, or do you lose all the flavor?

Your choice. You will lose some flavor with a second run but not all of it. I prefer to do two runs but I reserve a gallon or two of the fermented wash and add that into the low wines for the spirit run. That should add back some of the flavor lost by doing two runs. I just did this on a grape juice brandy yesterday and while I haven't made the cuts yet, a sample taste from mid run has a very promising flavor.

Like Braz says, it's up to you. I do as Braz and run my low wines with some wash and I've always been satisified with the results, plenty of flavor.

Big R

Well, run 1 is tonight. I'm having fun. About 9 gallons of wash. Smells great. The second 10 is going to be hard to rack off the pomace. How do I upload images?

Beerlover88 wrote:How do I upload images?

There are several topics which discuss uploading images... But while some suggest using an external image hosting company this is not necessary... When posting a message simply look down in the next section below the "Post a reply" panel for the "Upload attachment" section... Images are currently limited to 500px x 500px in size and ~100K in physical size as I recall...

One thing about pics Beerlover, is that most cameras have such big files now. My latest camera won't take a pic I can post here so I just use the camera in my cell phone. The file size works great.

Big R

rtalbigr wrote:One thing about pics Beerlover, is that most cameras have such big files now. My latest camera won't take a pic I can post here so I just use the camera in my cell phone. The file size works great.

Big R

Learning to work with pictures is just part of what we need to know in our everyday lives these days... Just like expecting to get groped at airports... Finding an easy to use image editing software and sticking with it is the key... I've used many over the years and use more than a few on a regular basis but only because they are part of my daily software arsenal that my profession requires... Some are simple and others have way more features than I'll ever master...

Sampled cuts tonight. Noticeably absent were strong heads, much like a sugar wash, maybe two cups. The next 4 cups have amazing pear flavor and aroma, but it tapers off fast from there. Is it usual to have the fruit flavor up front? This is my first fruit wash.

Last night I racked the second half of the fermentation using paint bags to strain off the pomace. After two weeks on the pomace, the wash smelled incredible. Running the second batch tonight. Wow! The pear flavor is incredible! This is so much fun. Also picked up another 3 bags (about 10 gallons) of pear pomace today for another 35 gallon fermentation! I love this kind of wash. Had a buddy over tonight who is pressing apples next weekend. Next up, apple pomace! I'm itching to try a batch with brown sugar or with a little molasses. Any suggestions?