Prickly Pear Beer Experiment

Question

I have 1.5lbs of prickly pears and want to make a 2gal all grain batch from them.

My question is how should I add the prickly pears?

Should I smash them and only add the juice?

or maybe

Cut off the skin and add them in secondary?

Answer 1

Not having done this, I can only offer my thoughts and opinions on the subject. I would probably juice and add the juice to the boil (probably as late as possible to pasteurize/sterilize without driving off all volatiles. You'll want to figure the volume and sugar content of juice to add and what your gravity needs to be pre-boil to hit your final post boil volume.

I expect that you'll have a large than normal volume of trub at the bottom of the fermenter after primary so you may want to shoot for a slightly higher initial volume to combat losses in the trub.

Answer 2

I wouldn't boil them if you like the aroma.

If your adding them to beer:

You should mash them up and add them (with juice) at flame out, whirlpool/sit for a few minutes to pasteurize. I would put the solids in a muslin bag for easy extraction. You can experiment from there, maybe even "dry pear" the finished beer:D I would keep the hops light until you know how this tastes.

If your just making a wine: I would mash them up with a potato masher and fill with water to desired quantity. Then hit it with campden. You should add sugar/honey/etc to hit the appropriate OG. I would put the solids in a bag and remove after fermentation is complete. Make sure to use a yeast nutrient if your not adding malt.

Let us know how this works out!