Today, we bottled our first batch of perry, or hard pear cider. We started it back on October 3rd. We used six gallons of pear cider from High Hill Orchard in Meriden. We got the cider straight from the press. It was made predominantly from bosc pears. We also got a gallon of fresh pear cider for drinking. The fresh pear cider did not taste as strongly of pear as I had hoped. It really didn’t taste significantly different from apple cider.

I had hoped to use a Belgian Lambic yeast, but Maltose Express, where we normally get our yeast did not have any in stock. So, I decided to use the same Belgian Trappist yeast that we had used for our previous batch of apple cider. The one problem we had with the Trappist yeast is that it generates a really frothy head, and you need much more head room in the top of the carboy. We didn’t have enough headroom with the batch of apple cider and had to clean the fermentation lock a couple of times. It was even worse with the pear cider actually managing to spew foam out of the fermentation lock. It was a mess that we had to clean a few times.

The fermentation had slowed down a bit earlier this week, but Kim and I have both been fighting colds and we didn’t want to rack the cider when we were fighting colds for fear of contaminating the cider. So, it spent a little more time in the first fermentation than I would have liked.

This afternoon, we finally got ready to rack it off. We do our first fermentation in a 6 1/2 gallon carboy. Then, we bottle off about a gallon and a half and do the second fermentation in a 5 gallon carboy. Typically, the cider we bottle off from the first fermentation tends to be a little more cloudy and yeasty.

The first pass came tasting much more of pear than I had anticipated and I was pleasantly surprised at that. It does have a little bit of an astringent taste, and I’m not sure how much that is because of the pear juice, or if some of it might be because of problems with the fermentation lock and a little bit of vinegar forming although Kim does not believe this to be the case. We’ll see how the first pass ages as well as how the second fermentation goes.

We will probably make another try at pear cider next year and see if we can get some pear cider that has more pear flavor to start with, and perhaps is prepared in other ways to have less tannins. We may also use a less frothy yeast next time, perhaps reverting to champagne yeast, which is what we used for our first pass at hard apple cider.

Meanwhile, we discussed whether or not to start a new batch of hard apple cider. Beardsley Cider Mill, which is where we’ve been getting our apple cider, does a special run the first Sunday of November especially for people brewing hard cider. The first Sunday of November is the 1st, which is just two weeks away. It would be cutting things a little bit too close to start a batch today or tomorrow and then hope to start a new batch in just two weeks.

However, today we stopped at the cider mill to pick up some fresh cider for drinking as is, and found out that the special batch won’t be run until November 8th, so we will probably try to get another batch done between now and then. We will probably make it similar to the maple apple cider we did in our previous batch.

As a final comment, I’ve had some great discussions with people via email and Facebook as well as in various cider mills. I want to thank the person who suggested trying my hand at pear cider and I look forward to further discussions about cider making.