HRUSHKA KREMNA
(That's Slovenian for "Creamy Pear")
Our two pear trees bore a lot of fruit in 2000 so I decided to make some pear wine. I rinsed, quartered, and cored a batch of pears, ending up with 17.5 pounds of pear segments, which I froze. When thawed, they were very mushy, with amber pear juice running out of them. I put them into the primary vat, mashed them thoroughly and added the following ingredients:
- 3 gallons water
- 7.5 pounds of white, granulated sugar which gave a specific gravity of 1.084
- 5.75 tablespoons of acid blend to obtain an acidity of .60%
- 2 teaspoons of pectic enzyme powder
- 1 teaspoon of grape tannin
- 3 yeast nutrient tablets
- 3 Campden tablets
I let the batch set overnight and added Montrachet yeast in the morning.
After eight days, the fermentation was still fairly active but for some reason I decided to transfer it to a 5 gallon carboy. It was too pulpy to siphon, so I strained it through a nylon bag and poured it into the carboy, obtaining about 4.5 gallons. During the night, the fermentation tempo increased. The pulp rose to the top and clogged the neck of the carboy. The pressure increased until it blew out both the pulp clog and the airlock. I could smell the result when I opened the cellar door the next morning. After cleaning up the mess, I still had about three gallons of must in the carboy. Not a total loss on the wine and it was a good lesson not to put solids into the carboys.
A month after the eruption, I noticed that the sediment was settling but with occasional slow-motion eruptions. I believe that this was a malo-lactic fermentation. I racked it twice during the next ten months. At this point, I had a very dry pear wine with about 13% alcohol.
By this time, the pear trees were ripe again. I processed enough pears to end up with 2.333 pounds of frozen quarters. When thawed, I put them through a food processor to yield 750 ml of juice/pulp. I heated this gently to reduce the volume to 450 ml or about two cups. When cooled, I poured it into a gallon jug and added:
- 0.5 teaspoon of potassium sorbate to prevent further fermentation (See Wine explosion!)
- 1 Campden tablet to nullify the sorbate taste
- 10 drops of pectinase enzyme solution
I filled the jug with the dry pear wine, stirred, and added an airlock. The rest of the pear wine was bottled at this time. Although I let the jug set for six weeks, I noticed no fermentation. The problem was that the pulp that I put into the jug was very light and fluffy and did not settle well. I lost a full bottle of wine from this batch because of the unsettled sediment. Next time I make cream wine, I'll strain the syrup of all pulp before adding to the wine.
We let it age an additional four months after bottling, then opened the first bottle of Hrushka Kremna. It was excellent. A crystal clear wine with a slightly golden, pear-like color, it was smooth, slightly sweet, and highly flavored of pears. It was very different than the dry pear wine from which it was derived, although the dry pear wine was very good, too. I'll be doing a lot more experimenting with cream-style wines in the coming years.
Return to wine page.