I was inspired to look into more interesting ingredients for my beers and I came across this thread at
HomebrewTalk.com (
thread). They started talking about prickly pear and I was out on a ride that day and started seeing ripe fruit everywhere. Soon after, a nice fellow
QUAFFer, Jeff, had some leftover fruit from his yard. His variety of prickly pears are huge, but that makes less work. I plan to try some of the smaller fruit to see how they differ. He told me his way of breaking down the fruit into a syrup, so having no prior experience that is what I went with.
I started with just over 3 lbs of fruit. I held the pears over the stove flame using tongs to burn off the nasty hairs/needles. Be very careful and it would be best to wear gloves in addition to using tongs. The hairs can be very annoying and difficult to remove. (I got a few in my hand while cleaning up). After burning the hairs I cut off the end that had most of the hairs. And then I sliced and diced the rest of the fruit and threw it in the pot.
With all 3 lbs in the pot I added about a cup of water just to insure the fruit wouldn't burn on the bottom. The fruit will produce a good amount of juice on their own. Per Jeff's recommendation I boiled the fruit for 2 hours. This helps to break down the mucus that is found in the fruit.
After boiling I poured it through a strainer and push out as much juice as possible. From there I poured the juice through the some muslin cloth. It happened to be about 16oz and fit nicely into an old water bottle.
I measured the pH to be about 4 and the gravity to be 1.050. The taste was interesting and a bit difficult to describe. It was similar to watermelon but with a little more sour twang. It did have a bit of a cooked flavor which I didn't enjoy too much, so I'm going try to get another variety and use it fresh. I haven't decided if I'm going to add this to a Berliner Weiss or to my sour pale.
