Pear Wine Experiment: Primary Fermentation

I started messing around with wine making and fermentation about three years ago, and have had mixed results. A few shining successes among many disappointments! This seemed like a fun way to continue my self-education while also getting to know the pear just a little deeper.

Here's the idea I'm operating on:

After looking at juice and concentrate prices, I decided to make a apple wine-perry hybrid that uses more apple than pear. Even if I had been able to afford more dessert pear juice, the wine resulting from it would probably be thin and boring since real perry pears are hard to come by (unless there's some growing in the backyard, a rare but slowly growing occurrence).  

What I've done, as you'll see below, is put together a 2 gallon batch that starts around 13% ABV and will hopefully go down to about 11% alcohol by volume (ABV). At that point, I will divide the batch into two one gallon batches, where I will transform one into a still, semi-sweet methelgin (a spiced, honey-sweetened wine) and the other will be carbonated and infused with ginger and hawthorn berries. Both should produce about 4 or 5 bottles each.

Approximate cost for ingredients to make a two
gallon batch- apple "cider", organic pear "nectar",yeast,
additives, and sanitizers: $30.00

After scrubbing down all my equipment with hot soapy water, I set everything to sanitize
with StarSan (phosphoric acid) in the bathtub.
1 ounce/5 gallons of H2O. No need to rinse afterwards.

You can't see them, but there's a hydrometer and airlock in there...

Pouring out the cheap apple "cider" from Tops, blending with the pear nectar
 from the co-op. Wondering if it's appropriate to call this pear wine, with only a quarter
of the recipe devoted to pears... 

Feeling a little disappointed on the unremarkable, bland Bartlett-flavor of the "pear nectar"
and how much money I spent on it. Wish I could have afforded a can of pear juice concentrate
from the company Vitner's Harvest ($35). 

Perfect! No need to adjust the acidity here. Thank you, apples! Wine needs to have
a pH between 3 and 4 not only to create the necessary environment for the yeast to proliferate
in, but also to make it taste more interesting than fruity flat rubbing alcohol.

Using my hydrometer to check the gravity (i.e. the density of sugar) in the must... 

The must alone had a starting gravity (SG) at 1.050, which had the potential to produce 7% alcohol by volume (ABV). Wine can spoil during the aging process if it's less than 10% ABV, so it's recommended to keep it between 12 - 14%. I wanted to get the SG up to about 1.100, which would ferment down to a rather dry wine that has a potential of 13% ABV, with room to backsweeten if the mood strikes me.  

Crushed two Camden tablets (one per gallon of must) to kill any unwanted microbes
in the must. This doesn't look illicit...

Doing a funny dance on top of the primary fermentation bucket to seal the lid.
Now to wait 24 hours for the sulfites to dissolve out...

My next move will be to let the must ferment for about a week (until 2/7), withdraw some of the must check the gravity to see what alcohol percentage it's at, and then divide the two gallon batch into the one gallon glass jugs for secondary fermentation and flavor agents. I'll need to rig up a homemade airlock of some sort...

Resources and References:
Mansfield, Scott. "Strong Waters: a simple guide to making beer, wine, cider and other spirited beverages at home". New York: Experiment, 2010. Print.