Making a mead with prickly pears

While at my local farmer's market I spotted a bin of nice-sized prickly pears. I had seen prickly pear puree for sell at some brewing shops, so I decided to buy some and make a mel with them. The recipe for 1 US gallon was: 2 lbs prickly pears 3 lbs honey 1.5 tsp yeast nutrient .25 tsp yeast energizer 2 tsp acid blend .5 tsp pectin enzyme
	I placed the pears into a bucket and covered them with boiling water for 2 minutes.
The pears soaked in the water for 2 minutes to loosen the skins.
	The pears were then placed in a bowl of ice water to cool them,
then they were easily peeled.
	The peeled pears were chopped into small pieces, placed into a pot, covered with water, and brought to a boil.
Once they were boiling, a potato masher was used to mash all the fruit into pulp and release the juice. Take care during the boil, I had a messy boilover that required an emergency cleanup. Burned prickly pear doesn't smell good.
	I use a clean tea press (never used for coffee) to extract my juice from the pulp. One advantage of the press is that hot liquids can be used, so I don't have to wait to cool my pulp. One disadvantage is size, but since I'm making 1-gallon batches it doesn't take long to get my juice. My press is cleaned fairly often with Oxyclean to remove any tea aroma and flavor.
The pulp is ladled into the press,
	then pressed to separate the solids from the juice. You can see how well the screen in the press works. As more solids build up you will need to apply a little more pressure. If the press fills up with solids simple pour out any clear juice and empty the solids into the trash.
I pour the juice into a separate bowl or pitcher, then once all the juice has been separated from the pulp I pour it back into the pot. You can see how nice and clean the juice is. This helps me to have more of my melomel to bottle, since I won't lose as much in the pulp during racking.
	The juice is heated then removed from the burner. The honey is poured into the juice and stirred to completely dissolve it.
Once the honey is dissolved, the pot is put back on the burner and the must is heated to 180 degrees. Take care not to overheat the must or you can lose the aromatics of the honey. I use a digital remote probe thermometer with an alarm to warm me when the temp is too high. The must is pasteurized for 20 minutes to destroy any microbes.
	Once the must is pasteurized it is cooled in an ice bath in the sink until the temperature reached 110 or below. Since I will be topping up with cold water I don't bring the temp all the way down to fermentation temps.
The cooled must is poured into the sanitized fermenter using a sanitized funnel.
	The fermenter is then topped up with cold water. I used bottled water because it has already been sanitized. The bottle is cooled in the refrigerator, then the outside is sanitized before opening.
The dry yeast is added to the must, allowed to rehydrate, then shaken. The shaking not only helps dissolve the yeast but also aerates the must. A stopper and airlock are fitted to the fermenter and it is allowed to ferment for a couple of weeks before being racked into a secondary and aged for at least a month prior to bottling.

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