Gingered pears

What do you do when you find a really good deal on something?  Buy it, get it home and then figure out how you are going to deal with it.  Such as my luck a couple of days ago with pears.  So I started looking for a good recipe in my Ball Complete book (page 69).  I found a recipe for Ginger Pear Preserves and decided that was it, for all the pears.  Spent a few hours peeling, coring and chopping the pears, juicing and zesting limes and I was ready.  Had enough for 3 batches.  First batch in, I couldn't get to gel stage no matter how long I cooked, it ended up as mush.  It started getting darker in color so I jarred it up anyway and hoped for at least a soft set.  Second and third batches I decided to use Sure Jell and went ahead and attacked the pears with the hand blender, same color developed and they still haven't set.  So I'm figuring that either the fact that I used beet sugar instead of cane sugar had something to do with it or the hard water residue on the pans complicated things.  Don't know.  I'll still have a very delicious ginger pear glaze though, I'm already envisioning this on pork chops, as a salad dressing, something to spice up a boxed cake mix with, lots of ideas!!
6 half pints and 8 pints