Controlling Pear Tannins

[Shaun Burnett]

Hi from NZ,

I’d appreciate your thoughts and experiences on how to prevent high tannin pears from descending into a “tannin brain” gel during fermentation.  I’m working with the only pears I have, some of which are high tannin and halfway through fermentation they gel up into a disgusting mess.  The juice is completely lost at this stage.

Do you macerate your pear pomace before pressing? Does this help?

I’m using Pectinase in the juice (but not the pomace) and this year I also tried a little calcium in the juice, but still the juice turned to actual custard. 

These  wild pears are awesome, so I’m wondering if I just need to gain a better understanding of how to handle them. I don’t want to give up just yet as the juice is excellent and I’m hoping I can get past this hurdle. 

Thanks 

[Andrew Lea]

If you search the archive of this group under something like pear tannin you will find much discussion of this over the last decade

Yes it is well worth trying maceration of the of the newly milled pears so that the most unstable polyphenols / procyanidins / tannins are oxidised onto the pulp by the native polyphenoloxidase in the first few minutes and thereby removed from the juice when you eventually press.  Then they are less likely to form a gel as the alcohol level rises.  This has  been done for centuries in Britain and Europe and is probably the simplest solution to the problem. 

You will need to experiment with conditions but it will likely repay the effort. Pectinases won’t work because it ain’t a pectin problem!  If you simply want to try fining of the finished product to clarify it, you may find new agents like chitosan or ultrafiltration (costly) might help. Are you near any wineries with UF you could trial?

Andrew

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