Cider has made its comeback. Walk into just about any taproom, bottle shop, or well-stocked grocery cooler in the United States, and you’re likely to find one or more ciders jockeying for space among the beers and RTD cocktails. People know what cider is, whether it’s the old-school hard cider of their youth or a new-look artisanal bottle that exudes rustic class.
However, ask them about this rare, mysterious thing called “perry,” and you may get a lot of blank looks. So, let’s talk about it and start unpeeling that pear—because if you’re letting it pass you by, you’re missing out on a wonderful beverage to brew and drink.
Briefly: Perry is to pears what cider is to apples. And that’s simple enough on paper, but the reality is more complicated and far more interesting. Perry has centuries of history in Britain and France, but in North America, it’s still a fringe pursuit. Ask a dozen American cider drinkers if they’ve had a true perry, and maybe one or two will say yes. Ask a cidermaker if they’ve made one, and there may be a long pause followed by a story of frustration, patience, or maybe even a dump bucket.
Heck, one of my perries turned a pale magenta color in the bottle, which—I don’t mind saying—freaked me out. It turned out to be a perfectly normal and safe thing, but yowza…
Here’s the thing: Pears don’t play nice. And that’s part of what makes perry both beguiling and elusive.
What Makes Perry, Perry?
First, definitions. At its most straightforward, perry is an alcoholic beverage made of fermented pear juice. However, as with cider, the difference between “pear-flavored alcohol” and the real thing is massive.
“Perries are very different than pear ciders, which typically are made mostly with apples or are dominated by other fruit besides pears,” says Jeremy Hall, cofounder of Blossom Barn Cidery in Grants Pass, Oregon.
That distinction matters. As with cider apples, traditional perry pears—those grown specifically for fermentation—do most of the heavy lifting. They don’t just add a “pear flavor.” These types of pears aren’t pleasant to eat fresh—they’re often small, tannic, acidic, and gritty.
I first got into perrymaking after planting some fruit trees to screen my backyard view of a neighbor—and I got a great deal on the trees because they produced pears that other people didn’t want! Once pressed and fermented, however, the same traits that make those pears less than ideal to eat make them a real pleasure to drink.
And even if perry pears and cider apples have that distinction in common, the drinks are not the same.
“Perry has a distinctly different flavor profile—often lighter, more delicate, and nuanced than most apple ciders,” says Kari Williams, owner and head cidermaker at Snow Capped Cider in Cedaredge, Colorado—a frequent award winner for their perries as well as ciders. “A great perry is soft and elegant on the palate, with a harmonious balance of sweetness and acidity.”
The result is a beverage that shares cider’s refreshment but often with a more ethereal character and with a persistently light sweetness that’s due to the chemistry of pears themselves. A true perry is made exclusively from pears and pear juice—otherwise, you’re making something like pear cider (apples and pears) or pear wine (pear juice plus adjunct sugars). And the end results are not the same.
The Problem with Pear
So why don’t we see more perry on shelves? It’s not because they’re unappealing. The answer lies in the fruit.
Unlike apples, pears carry with them a whole chemistry set of quirks that make them more challenging to ferment well—and chief among those is sorbitol.
Both pears and apples have a variety of natural sugars, says Doug Reeser, owner and cidermaker at Excursion Ciders in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania. “But pears have sorbitol, a naturally occurring sugar that is unfermentable. This means there is always a light sweetness, even in the driest perries.”
That may sound like a nice perk—and it can be—but it also complicates fermentation management, measurement, and consistency. For example, as Hall at Blossom Barn notes, it can impact your hydrometer or refractometer readings.
It’s not just the sugars that are different in pears—it’s also the acid content.
“Much of the acid in pears is citric,” Hall says, “which has a ready path to acetic acid and hydrogen sulfide. Most of the acid in apples is malic, which is much more robust and doesn’t pose the challenges that citric acid does during fermentation and aging.”
Acetic acid (vinegar) and hydrogen sulfide (rotten eggs) can both ruin your whole day, flavor-wise.
Then there’s the texture. Pears are annoyingly hard when unripe—then they get soft and mushy when ripe, which makes pressing and juicing difficult. Even before fermentation, handling pears is a test of patience—and that’s before we factor in the near-perfect timing of the squirrels and birds who know when they’re just right, going absolutely wild on them the day before I’m planning to go out and pick. Nature, eh?
Yet these are not insurmountable problems. When it comes to sweetness and fermentability, today’s yeast options offer plenty of tools to dial in what we want in terms of residual sugars. However, to the modern brewer or cidermaker in a hurry, this piece of advice isn’t going to be welcome: Slow down.
At Excursion, Reeser says he’s battled through lagged fermentations, sulfur production, and stuck batches. His solution? Let time do the work.
“Generally, time is our friend with perry, and we age each season’s pressing for a full year before packaging,” he says. “When young, there can be a harshness to them, but with age they mellow and soften. Barrel aging also softens and balances our perries. If anything, I would say that perry should not be rushed, and patience can save a perry that you may think needs to be dumped.”
Williams at Snow Capped also preaches patience. For her, the careful selection of pears and close monitoring of fermentation are critical, but it’s time that ties it all together.
“Fermentation can be unpredictable, especially in early attempts,” she says. “Monitor the process closely and don’t get discouraged if the first batch isn’t perfect. Perrymaking is as much an art as a science. Patience and practice are essential.”
From my own home-perrymaking perspective, I’ll add that I’ve had success with picking early—rescuing the pears from the scavenging fauna—and letting my pears rest in the basement for a week before pressing.
It’s a refrain you’ll hear from just about anyone who’s tried to make perry more than once: Don’t expect instant gratification. A good perry takes time, and plenty of it.
Practical Advice
For those prepared to take their first plunge into producing perry, what makes the difference between drinkable and dumpable?
First, start with the right pears.
“The key is selecting the right pears and understanding their characteristics before fermentation,” Williams says. “Certain pear varieties are ideal for aging, while timing the harvest can make a significant difference in flavor development.”
Traditional perry pears are relatively rare in the North America, so Hall suggests foraging or working with wild pears. (That’s assuming you’re not like me, lucky enough to accidentally buy the right variety from a Scouting America fundraiser.)
Williams adds: “The seeds from culinary pears are usually viable, and birds who eat them can plant them in hedgerows, woodlands, and other places that aren’t heavily managed.” You might also be able to forage for some good options and then cultivate your own.
Second, treat the juice properly.
Pectic enzyme is your friend in many a fruit beer, wine, or cider, and it’s especially so with perry. It’s not just a clarifying tool—though, oddly, that’s the most common reason I hear from homebrewers who use it in their fruit beers—but it also increases flavor extraction. That’s important because pear has a softer flavor than many other fruits.
Also be sure to adjust your acidity. Most pears come in at a pH level of about 4.0—too high for safe or bright fermentation. “You should add malic acid to get the pH to be 3.8 or below,” Hall says. “Typically, that means adding one to two grams per liter, but all pears are different and vary each year.”
You might have your brewing dialed in to the point where you don’t have to worry much about pH, but that’s not the case here. Time to break out those test strips or pH meter.
Third, control the fermentation environment.
Commercial beer-brewing yeasts are an option, but for perry they’re just not as thoroughly worked, reviewed, and “known” as wine and cider yeasts. You want what works.
As Williams says, fermentations can be “unpredictable, especially in early attempts.” With that in mind, we can stack the deck in our favor through practice, patience, and good documentation. Choose a consistent yeast and pay attention to your fermentation temperatures and timing. Before long, you’ll have gathered a good base of knowledge to inform future batches.
Also, again, don’t rush anything—neither in fermentation nor aging. Even after fermentation, my perries sit in their bottles for at least six months before I crack one open. My oldest at the moment is approaching three years of maturation.
Now What?
Once you’ve managed to make a solid traditional perry, the temptation is obvious: What else can you do with it?
Reeser has experimented with adjuncts, barrel aging, and foraged pears. He says bottles of his upcoming Community Perry, made from five different sources of unknown pear types, is delivering notes of pineapple and tropical fruit unlike anything he’s made before.
Reeser also produces fruited perries—flavored with blackberries or raspberries—that have proven to be popular in the taproom. And he’s intrigued by the idea of “ice perry”—fractionally frozen to concentrate the flavors, like eisbock or ice cider.
If you’re going to get experimental, however, Williams urges caution. First, know your pears. “Understanding the inherent style of your pears is critical,” she says. “Balancing the natural character of the pear with any enhancements is key to maintaining its identity as perry.”
Likewise, Hall also encourages would-be perrymakers to keep it classic and be aware that other flavors can easily dominate the pear.
“I think that once you’re adding more than 10 percent of juice from other fruits, it is no longer a perry but rather a pear cider,” he says. “Because perries are delicate, the characters that make them unique are lost and overwhelmed once you use a lot of juice from other fruit.”
Innovation has its place. For purists, however, protecting the identity of perry means keeping pears at the center of the profile.
For now, perry remains a rarity in the United States. It’s something you might spot at a cidery tasting room, or you may see a single dusty bottle on the shelf of a specialty shop. Thankfully, the passion of makers such as Williams, Reeser, and Hall means that the story of perry is still being written.
Just look at cider: Not so long ago, it was mostly a mass-produced, over-sweet mess in the United States. Today, there’s a thriving craft movement exploring heirloom apples, wild fermentations, and terroir-driven expressions. Perry could follow the same path, if more slowly.
Here’s that word again: Patience. Because it will take patient cidermakers, adventurous drinkers, and perhaps a few lucky orchardists willing to gamble on planting pears that don’t taste great off the tree.
Perry isn’t easy. It tests the patience of makers and the palates of drinkers. It requires fruit that’s hard to grow, hard to juice, and finicky to ferment. When it all comes together, however, the result is singular: a drink that captures the pear’s delicate grace, layered with complexity, and touched by just enough natural sweetness to keep you coming back for another sip.
Maybe that’s why perry feels so special to me. In a world of beverages—including craft beer—that are increasingly engineered, predictable, and consistent, perry insists on being unpredictable, inconsistent, and demanding. But that difficulty—the effort it takes to make and appreciate perry—is exactly what makes it worth chasing.
