Perry Making

My parents have a Conference pear tree in their garden and this year was a very good year for the pears, so I took a trip up the ladder and collected all that I could reach and I've decided to make perry from them!

This is the first time I've made any kind of fruit cider so it's really exciting! Lacking a pulp an press (used for traditional cider making, where the fruit is crushed and then pressed through cloths to extract the juice) we decided to just go with what equipment we had and juiced the pears in a juicer, so we'll see how it goes! A pulper and press is now definitely on the wish list!

HERE is a useful guide on the process of perry making.

And here's how we prepared our perry:

First of all we washed the pears in water and cut out any hard or brown bits on the skins.


The next step was to put them through the juicer.


Then we poured the juice into a sterilised fermentation bin though a sieve to catch any lumps of pear.


Once all the pears were juiced we added wine yeast and a teaspoon of sugar to the juice to aid the fermentation. Just mix the yeast in some boiled-and-cooled-to-room-temperature water and leave for a few hours for it to activate before pouring and stirring into the juice. Put the lid on to the bin and leave it to do it's thing for about 5 days to a week.


There are two stages of fermentation when making perry; the first fermentation is carried out by the yeasts (in our case, the wine yeasts) and the second converts L(-)-malic acid to L(+)-lactic acid and carbon dioxide. (You can read the scientific part HERE).

The second stage of fermentation will be carried out in a demi john, which we will be transferring it into next week...