Help with Pears

Okay, I just had to know more.

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Fruit that’s grown during really hot, dry summers has a tendency to turn pink once in the jars.

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It happens more often if there's a blush on the skin, but factors like the amount of nitrogen applied during the growth cycle can also play a role in color changes.

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In canned apples, pears, peaches, and quinces there can sometimes be a pink, red, blue, or purple color, this is caused from a natural chemical change which occurs in cooking the fruit. There is nothing that can prevent this that we know of.

I had heard before of this happening with canned quince, but not the other fruits.

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Pears may turn pinkish in response to several conditions. Pears contain leucoanthocyanins, colorless precursors to colorful anthocyanin pigments. Pear variety and handling techniques determine whether color changes will occur. Heating that occurs during canning or when pears or boiled in a syrup may enhance the conversion from leucoanthocyanins, to anthocyanins. The anthocyanins then combine with metallic ions to produce the pink color. There is no way to prevent this reaction, which is harmless.

There's a fuller explanation here, including other factors that affect the color and a possible remedy:
http://ift.tt/2wrqtM4
Growing pears on acid soil, excessive cooking, or delayed cooling will turn them pink
HFCS turned them pink, but sugar syrup didn't.

http://ift.tt/2wr0Mei

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Despite the identification of the pigment responsible for discoloration in canned pears as a tin–cyanidin complex, addition of stannous ions to susceptible pear purée prior to processing partly or completely inhibits the discoloration. This effect cannot be obtained with canned pear halves, but other reducing agents, such as sulphur dioxide, are effective inhibitors of the discoloration. By such treatment canned pears of acceptable quality can be produced from varieties which are normally avoided for processing because of their susceptibility to discoloration. A mechanism whereby reducing agents prevent the formation of pink pigments is described, and an explanation is given of the differences in the effect of stannous ions on pear halves and pear purées.

So I guess feed the trees some lime/bone meal, don't over-feed the nitrogen, keep them well-watered, pray for a cooler summer, can them before the skin starts to blush, water-bath can, cool the jars quickly, and hope for a better outcome next year.

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Help with Pears