No it does not matter the time they ripen as much as its more about the texture of european pears which become melting. Your fine melting types in my experience typically benefit from brief refrigeration which is known as chilling. Hybrids keep a course texture because they are not a true european pear they are a hybrid. Many European pears like clapps favorite are so good it does not matter to much as long as its a large harvest. Bosc as an example should not really be refrigerated until they are technically ripe then refrigeration changes very good quality pears into excellent quality! Taste is subjective but here is a great article describing the chilling process briefly Rethinking the chill requirement for pear ripening | Good Fruit Grower. The article eludes to my method of ripening which is large numbers of pears at once which produces the gas responsible for proper ripening rather than refrigeration. All that said the article does discuss refrigeration time, tempetaure, and type of pear eg. melting type european pears such as williams aka bartlett, bosc, comice etc. . In smaller numbers proper chilling of true european pears is best accomplished by refrigeration. In the south as an example they do not grow true european type pears. Those type of hybrids ripen fine on the table. I harvest large numbers at once Here comes the 2016 apple and Pear harvest!. Frequently i have a harvest of hundreds of gallons at once ripening. This picture is a single picking as shown in the link above so naturally the gas is higher during ripening. Technically any pear ripens on the table with or without large quantities even if they have not been chilled as long as they are ripe when you pick them. To say a pear is ripe or unripe covers a lot of ground because many pears are eaten by people in various stages of ripeness. A spotted banana is sweet to some rotten to others, a green banana is perfect to some and not yet ripe to others. Yellow bananas without spots are what the largest group of people like. Just for the record i like mine with spots just like my pears the last stage of ripeness prior to decomposition when sugars are the highest.
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