Banana Mead ?

Just got 11lb of banana "topped and tailed", chopped into 5mm slices and boiled/simmered for about 30 minutes. I'm gonna hit it with some sulphite once it's cooled, then it will probably need pectolase, amylase or both.

Do I need both ? Can I use them at the same time or do I need to use one then the other ?

It's gonna be made into a 2 gallon (imp a.k.a. 4.55 litres per gallon) batch.

I only used pectolase on mine, I boiled like you but just sqeezed all the liquid out rather than putting the banana in directly. Cleared fine, though I've not opened a bottle yet, its just hit a year old. I guess amalase would help get the sugars out from the starches? I've not used it on anything so can't comment on its use.

Insomniac said:

I only used pectolase on mine, I boiled like you but just sqeezed all the liquid out rather than putting the banana in directly. Cleared fine, though I've not opened a bottle yet, its just hit a year old. I guess amalase would help get the sugars out from the starches? I've not used it on anything so can't comment on its use.

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It's what got me thinking i.e. whether any of the starches came out in the boil or whether they were broken down by the boil.......

It's in the fermenter now, with 6lb of local wild flower (from Paynes). I've sulphited it so it's not gonna get pitched for the next day or so, hell I might just hit it with both the pectolase and amylase tomorrow anyway.

Dunno what gravity it's at yet either, so I'll have to test before I pitch the yeast (probably going with 71B)........

Sounds good! I've got a load of honey from paynes before, not used the wild flower yet but used their orange blossom for my banana mead and have some of their others on the go as traditionals.

never made it, but you might want to look at this thread: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f30/my-banana-melomel-155755/

Check out Yooper's banana wine recipe. I made a mead version, be prepared for a VERY long aging.

So far, I rehydrated the yeast with GoFerm stirred and pitched, there was a slight show of bubbles (after 12 hours), so stirred and added the nutrient and energiser but 24 hours after that, its still not fermenting properly, so I'm suspecting that the sulphites hadn't dissipated enough and the yeast is still being inhibited.......

Bugger!

Ah well, I'll just keep aerating for now............

Hey oldmate, how long did yours take to age in the end? Mine has just reached a year old, I've not opened it yet but was planning too, should I wait longer?

Insomniac said:

Hey oldmate, how long did yours take to age in the end? Mine has just reached a year old, I've not opened it yet but was planning too, should I wait longer?

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Hasn't finished the ferment yet (the banana one that is), but I've got a few traditionals that are 4 years old........waiting for me to get my finger out my backside and bottle them.

How hard do you guys think a banana, strawberry mead would be to pull off? I've read that strawberries are a pain to work with because of the falvors are easy to blow out the airlock. What do you think would be the best yeast selction for this little project? I was thinking about some d-47 because of the type of flavors. Well thanks before hand guys and hope to hear your thoughts soon.

No idea, but you could always try making a 'plain' mead and then racking onto the strawberries / banana in a secondary?

Machalel said:

No idea, but you could always try making a 'plain' mead and then racking onto the strawberries / banana in a secondary?

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Which is the best way to go, as you have greater control over the level of the fruit flavour.....

The banana mead is fermenting fine. A 20 point drop in 1 day, and while it wasn't as impressive as the flickr clip that Machalel posted (presuming the username is common to the same person) over at gotmead, because my fermenter is a blue plastic water cooler bottle and the must is just straight banana, but it was still churning the sediment well, until I stirred the hell out of it.

Well, it's nearly finished already.

I tested it when we got back from lunch and it's reading about 1.005, which is about 11.5% ABV (if I've remembered my start details correctly), so there's some room for it to go further i.e. 71B is capable of about 14% ABV.

Now as I'd expected, it's not very "bananery" in taste, but that's mainly because all of the extracted flavour has been in primary fermentation. So one of the things I've decided I will be doing, will be to rack it off the sediment and onto some more banana.

What I haven't decided about yet, is whether I'm gonna augment the alcohol some with a bit more honey, or possibly change the flavour a bit by adding some vanilla as it goes quite well with banana.

Or I also have the option of adding a 1lb jar of malt extract, letting it do it's thing before back sweetening.

Of course, it's all rather "undecided" as this batch wasn't really planned because I wasn't expecting to be given the banana that prompted this batch (and I'm far too disorganised when it comes to my batches).

I do suspect that both the malt and vanilla would enhance the banana flavour if it's present in a large enough quantity. I suppose I'm unsure because so many of the recipes and brews that others make, I wouldn't - some wonderful ideas, but I just don't see the point in a lot of them. Perhaps because I'm not adventurous enough, I don't know......

As ever, any ideas or suggestions you may have are very welcome.....

Adding the Malt extract to the secondary might be interesting. According to Nutritiondata.self.com a 225g sample of raw bannana has 12.1g of Starch & 22.5mg of Maltose. If you were to make a mash with the Malt Extract & the secondary bannana you can probably get the amalyse enzymes to break down some of the complex sugars. People have said that bannana meads take a lot of aging so will the broken down starch and maltose make for better conditions for this mead to age less before being drinkable? I dont know but I think it would be fun to try out.

I added sun dried bananas to my secondary (holland and barrett), couldn't tell you if that was a good or bad idea having not opened it yet! But they did hold together better than fresh banana so less sediment to try and rack off. While I've not opened a bottle yet, I did have an amount left over at bottling that I put under vaccuum and tested every month or so till it ran out. When young it was mostly alcohol flavour thanks to being a warm ferment with d47, no banana to be seen anywhere. When I finished it about 8 months later, it was actually drinkable and I could just about taste the banana coming back.

fatbloke said:

The banana mead is fermenting fine. A 20 point drop in 1 day, and while it wasn't as impressive as the flickr clip that Machalel posted (presuming the username is common to the same person) over at gotmead, because my fermenter is a blue plastic water cooler bottle and the must is just straight banana, but it was still churning the sediment well, until I stirred the hell out of it.

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Yeah, thats me. The video is here too.

Mine is starting to clear, although not anywhere near enough to see through yet. I'm going to give it another month and check on it again then

Why do you boil the banana? I might be mistaken but in papazians brew book he said no to bring fruit to a boil and instead let it steep at 160-180degrees F ? I'm not really sure how wine works compared to beer. Can anyone explain this to me? Is it because the banana is such a different kind of fruit?

brewsochist said:

Why do you boil the banana? I might be mistaken but in papazians brew book he said no to bring fruit to a boil and instead let it steep at 160-180degrees F ? I'm not really sure how wine works compared to beer. Can anyone explain this to me? Is it because the banana is such a different kind of fruit?

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While I've got Papazian's book, I don't really use it, he's a "beer person". I just dug around the net for guidance on using banana, and the couple of wine recipes I found said about "topping and tailing" the banana and boiling them as it made for (apparently) a better ferment, with less pulp hassles, that is likely to clear better - oh and that with fermenting on the pulp can also create for a more "bananery" taste.

As this was a "whim" attempt (having been given the banana - and not wanting to waste it - 11lb would be too much to eat before it went off), I just dug around for ideas and went with that.

The hindsight thing being, that I'd probably rather have a more bananery taste, so I'll probably get a couple of pounds, skin them and then drop them in once it's been racked and stabilised.

Actually, again on a whim, I've just added a 340g jar of the liquid malt extract so I'll probably let it go for now and once it's dropped a sediment, rack it off, stabilise and hit it with extra banana while it's clearing. I'll be sweetening it up anyway.......