I’ve always wanted to try a pear liqueur, but the price points never made sense to me. The cheap options felt likely to taste artificial, and the higher-end bottles felt like an unreasonable gamble.
I went back and forth on the base spirit and landed on Laird’s Straight Applejack. The logic was that apple would support and frame the pear rather than compete with it, which ended up working exactly as hoped. The result is a very drinkable, pear-forward spirit sitting around what I’d call the sweet spot at roughly 30% ABV.
Big lesson learned: Pectinex becomes largely inactive at higher ABV. My original ~400 g of pear wasn’t enough to get the mash to break, so I bumped it closer to 500 g and let it sit overnight before it finally split. Even then, the solids weren’t super firm, and I finished it with a coffee filter after spinning.
All told, I’m really happy with how it turned out and figured it was worth sharing with the community.
