Prickly Pear

[Gregory_Naff]

Have any of you used prickly pear in a mead? The prickly pear looks like it is ripe enough now and I was looking for some suggestions. I am going to start with a desert honey. I was trying to decide if I should just juice the fruits and use only the juice, or pulp and use the whole thing? Any suggestions?

[Anthony]

I've only made one melomel so far using black currants. From this I have desided it is best to place the fruit in a fine mesh grain bag (trying to rack the mead off the fruit is a pain). I didn't freeze or sulfite the fruit and the batch ended up infected (flowers of wine), in the future I will freeze any raw fruit going into mead, then pour the hot must over the bag of fruit in the primary. As to using pears, I would wash, dry, peel and cut into pieces before placing in a grain bag. Place the grain bag in the bottom of primary bucket then mash the fruit in the bag after which pour the hot must directly on to the bag. Let it cool to at least 80° F. before whipping it into a froth with a balloon whisk (after adding yeast nutrient) and pitch the yeast starter.

Anthony

[Ben Brewcat]

I haven't made one personally but have enjoyed a couple. Recipes I've seen call for 1.2 to 2.5 lbs per gallon of mead, usually pureed or at least chopped. It's messy. The pulp is available prepackaged and some report good success; using the pulp would lend more flavor from solids and such, though you'll lose more volume from racking. Definitely peel the fruit (ow!). Might consider using some pectic enzyme to prevent cloudiness and reduce some of the pulpiness to fermentables.

I used to have a recipe in one of the Papazian books, but it must be on one of my library's many "extended loans". Perhaps the loans should go out with a nuc chained to them... probably get them back a lot more reliably ;) !

Yeast suggestions might include Lalvin's D-47, which can enhance some of the aromatics from fruits.

[Gregory_Naff]

well i poicked about 10lbs of the fruit this weekend. I used a torch to remove the spines. Almost all the meads I make are melomels and I have always frozen my fruits and will do so again. Peeling these things is a trick. Because the spines are off, it isn't painfull, but they seem to just rupture. I've tried blanching them with little success. I think I am just going to puree them and freeze them that way.

[Gregory_Naff]

I haven't used Lalvin's D-47. How well does it start? When you have used it have you used it from a starter or just pitched it dry?
I typically pitch a large starter when I am working with acidic fruits, but that isn't necessary with the Champagne yeasts. Not sure of the acid content of the Prickly Pear.

[Ben Brewcat]

I always make a starter, but I'm geeky and anal (and have canned sterile wort that I prepare about twice a year, nature's perfect yeast food). Any excuse to play with the Erlenmeyer flask :D . My experience personally and from what I've been taught is that lag time, ferment vigor and attenuation are affected by aeration, overall yeast health, pitch size and temperature and only extremely stressful musts (in pH or gravity) will cause problems if those things are addressed.

That said, some yeasts are for sure more finicky. The various champagnes fall well outside that category. If anything they're a little more aggressive than I like for most batches. That's mostly because I like a little residual sweetness without making shuttle fuel ;) .

It's worth reiterating the difference between rehydrating and a starter too. Rehydration should be in warm water only, and only takes @ 15 mins. For starters (if desired and after rehydration) there are two schools of thought: 1) make a must as similar to the batch it'll be pitched into as you can, or 2) make as healthy a yeast batch as you can and they'll take care of you in return. Obviously (from the wort starter) I'm usually a #2 cat. FWIW Lalvin, Red Star, YeastLab, White Labs and Wyeast all propogate all their yeasts in a malt-based medium even for pitching into wines or meads; I follow suit. In meads especially, I usually pitch the whole starter, pint to quart-sized, at high krauesen: the tiny amount of malt it contributes provides nutrients and ameliorates (buffers actually) the acidification of the must that can stick or slow ferments. For non-canners, DME can be readily measured by spoonful into boiling water to make sterile starters. Cool, aerate, pitch and stand back!

It's also possible to overpitch, especially in small batch sizes with dry yeast which has a ton of cells. They end up competing over limited resources and none of them are optimally healthy, potentially causing problems.

[Ben Brewcat]

P.S. great idea with the torch!

[nursebee]

Ben, from where is the frozen pulp available? I would love to try and make one of these. Enjoyed one at a comp. Around here the fruit does not get as large as I here they can get.

[Ben Brewcat]

St. Pats used to carry it, but I just looked and they've stopped! Sorry I don't know any others offhand. A quick Google on "prickly pear pulp" produced this concentrate http://www.desertusa.com/web_cart/db/pages/9066D.html I know some Latin grocers in our area carry it for making smoothie-like dealies ( batidos) which are seriously yummy. You could check that avenue... At least here in CO I can often get the fruits in bulk bins that are pretty fresh.

[Gregory_Naff]

Some notes on Prickly Pear (learned the hard way)
- if you are using fresh fruit.
1)Using a torch, burn of all of the splines and hairs on the day you harvest them. DO NOT refregirate the fruits for a week, pull them out on the most humid day of the year and try to burn off the hairy stickers. They do not burn and they do stick into the skin nicely. :eek:

2) Peel the fruit using a sharp knife or potato peeler. If the fruit is VERY ripe, you can just cut it in half and scoop out the meat.

3) Don't try to dispose of the seeds, these won't affect the mead and there are hundreds of them in each piece of fruit.

4) Wear latex or rubber kitchen glove, otherwise your hands spend 3 days an off shade of violet (at least 3) :rolleyes:

5)Use a blow-off tube instead of an airlock, otherwise your bathroom spends a few days an off shade of violet :eek:

6) Puree the fruit in a blender, not a food processor. The fruit goes to juice really quickly and seems to leak everywhere. - the old murphy rule... the more purple the liquid the quicker the obsorbtion into grout.

[CamelThorny]

Gregory,

I'm just getting into this mead thing, and the prickly pear mead sounds very interesting. How much prickly pear did you use? Are you supposed to add this stuff to the primary, and do you just throw it in or use a mesh bag?

Thanks,
Steve

[Gregory_Naff]

Steve,

I used about a half gallon of prickly pear for a 5 gallon finish. I put it in with the honey and water and pasturized (brought to 165f and held for about 15 minutes). It is still plugging away. I will rack it into secondary at the end of September. I will not take anything off the bottom when I transfer it. After it stay in secondary about 90+ days, i will add some pectic enzyme to drop out the cloudiness, about 2 days after that I will add some Polycar and crash the temp to about 36f. after two days I will bottle it.