Bananas

So I have some leftover grains and hops from an apple cinnamon ale that I made a few weeks ago. (Fuggle and Hallertau). When I made that last brew, I figured based on smell that it would do nicely with bananas just as it did with apples.

For the apple recipe you basically just steep the apples for 20 minutes during the cooldown after the boil. Could I do this same thing with bananas or will there be some kind of funkiness? How many bananas for 1 gallon?

Fuggles and hallertau would go great in a hefe. Pick up a pack of hefeweizen yeast and you won't need the bananas at all. This yeast strain has a very fruity aroma thats described 9 times out of ten as smelling much like bananas. I think actually adding them into a brew would be alittle intense myself as I only care for a slight banana taste to anything. If you can make it work though and it's something you wanna try go for it!! There is banana bread beer out there so you might wanna look into a clone of that for a first go at it.

Yeah, I love the Wells Banana Bread beer, so deelish.

We'll see if this turns out. I don't know anything about how the fruit behaves during fermentation but we're about to find out. Someone suggested sanitizing the banana with vodka. I'll do that just for the hell of it, it won't hurt anything.

as long as your hands are good and sanitized when peeling the banana, nothing can get in there if the peel is not broken. wouldnt even worry about sanitizing them.