Pear Mead

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My first attempt at making a Pear Mead, using a fruit wine concentrate.

Originally Posted: Aug. 8, 2020

Basic ingredients I used for my first attempt at pear mead: Vintner’s Best brand pear wine concentrate and 15 lbs. of Kirkland brand clover honey.

Table of Contents

Quick Specs

OG = Originally I forgot to take into account the SG of the pear wine concentrate I was using:
- 18.9 Brix or 1.0781 SG from just the pear concentrate alone (was originally meant to be used just for pear wine) (Brix converter).
- Added 10lbs of honey, which added .070 to the gravity bringing it to 1.1481, so the unsplit batch was trying to get to 19.4% ABV.
- Had to split the batch into two and water both down to 5.5 gallons each.
ABV: ~13% at the end of everything
Taste Profile: Once it finally finished, it tastes light and mildly sweet, like a Pinot Grigio
Time: Too long (it took me a while to figure out why it wouldn’t ferment out dry)
Yield: Too much (see above), 55 bottles

Intro

When I was just starting out experimenting with fermentation, I didn’t have the equipment to brew much beer at home. I had a few 1-gallon carboys and would make some basic ciders in them. I tried using the same basic formula on several different store-bought juices and usually they turned out great; among my favorites were a 100% cherry cider, a blueberry one, and a pear cider.

Pears are a pomacious fruit like apples, but they don’t contain nearly as much juice. However, along with fermentable sugars pears are also a natural source of sorbitol, a sugar-alcohol most commonly used as a zero-calorie sweetener in chewing gum. Sorbitol and other sugar alcohols can’t be fermented by yeast but still taste sweet to the human tongue. Ergo, even the driest pear cider should have a mild sweetness to them from the sorbitol.

That early experiment inspired me to make a pear mead. It was an interesting experience to say the least.

Brief History

Pear cider shares a similar history and geography with apple cider. Though not as common as apple-based ciders, pear cider is brewed in the respective “cider country” regions of southern England and northern France. The best purely pear ciders—called perries—are made from the juice of perry pears rather than ‘eating’ pears. Many modern commercial examples of pear cider use apple juice as the primary fermentable ingredient and add just enough pear juice to lend a distinctly pear flavor to the finished product.

Pear Mead in Fermenter — Fermentation took off like a rocket at first, so I supposed the osmotic pressure of the sugars didn’t stress the yeast too much.

Problems I Ran Into

I’m writing this specific section before we even get to the ingredients, instructions, etc., so that the changes I’ve made to the ingredients and instructions will make sense. My experience using Country Spoon concentrates to make my Blueberry Mead and Cherry Mead got me in the bad habit of not taking the sugar content in concentrates seriously. I decided to use Vintner’s Best because they had a highly rated pear wine concentrate made from natural-enough ingredients. Aside from the problems I ran into (my fault), I’d still say it’s a solid product.

If I’d been paying attention to the SG on the label, I would’ve used only half the bottle. What happened was this: I mixed all the ingredients together, but the honey hadn’t mixed fully into the solution when I took my OG reading. After that, no matter how much extra champagne yeast, yeast nutrient, and yeast energizer I used, the mead stayed too sweet.

It took until I made a similar mistake with the second batch of my Mango-Habanero Mead (also made with Vintner’s Best concentrate) for me to figure out what the problem was: the combined SG of the concentrate and the honey came to about 1.148 and the mead was trying to get to ~19% ABV whether the yeast could handle that or not.

At this point, I did some calculations, split the batch equally into two fermenters, and diluted each with spring water to 5.5 gallons. I also added some R.W. Knudsen pear juice to each, to make sure they would still have some natural pear flavor after the dilution. I was aiming to get the finished mead to ~13% ABV. It worked, but I ended up with about twice as much mead than I usually get from a batch.

In the future, I think I’ll stockpile bottles of R.W. Knudsen pear juice until I have enough for 5 gallons. I want to see if there’s a noticeable flavor difference between both types of pear mead.

I’ll probably use Vintner’s Best again in future fruit meads if I can’t find enough fresh fruit or juice, but I’ll be sure to use only half the bottle at a time. It still makes a pretty solid mead. I might even experiment with using small amounts to flavor ciders.

Ingredients

5 gallons of pear juice (I’ll do this next time, and damn the expense)
- If you use a pear concentrate to be more economical, just make sure you take the SG on the label into account. I’m all for using concentrates, especially ones with natural ingredients. Just remember that concentrates specifically made for winemaking should already have all the sugar they need to become a fruit wine.
10 lbs. of honey of your choice (a lighter flavored honey like clover or wildflower is better for this mead)
Yeast nutrient
4 sliced pears (optional)
Lalvin D-47
- I think I also added several packets of EC-1118 when I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t drying out.

Equipment

Sanitizer
Fermenter
Airlock and stopper
Sous vide circulator (optional, to warm the honey)

Instructions

Optional: Warm the honey per your preferred method.
Mix warmed honey, juice (or concentrate and water), nutrient, and yeast. If using real pear juice, add pectic enzyme now if you want a clear mead (the effect of pectic enzyme is weakened as alcohol content goes up, so adding it later won’t be as effective).
Fruit could be added on primary or secondary, but I’m not sure how much flavor the sliced pears actually contributed to my batch.

Pear Mead, Bottled and Labeled — Bottled pear mead, labeled with the nickname “Anjoumel” after the Anjou pear.

Variations

Like I said, I haven’t done this one with real juice (unlike my experimental pear cider years ago). I want to, and I want to taste the two pear meads side by side.

Possible Culinary Uses

I think this one would be good in a salad dressing. I’m picturing a salad with that dressing, goat cheese, sliced strawberries, and candied walnuts, with blackened salmon on top. It might also be good with whitefish or lamb.

Since I ended up with 55 bottles of this mead, I’ve also turned several into a Pear Mead Vinegar, which would also be good as a salad dressing. It’s similar but lighter in flavor to apple cider vinegar.