Experimenting with Bananas and Sweet Potatoes

This week I think I'm going to take the plunge and see if I can't get any conversion out of some sweet potatoes and bananas. Here's the recipe I'm planning, as usual those with greater experience and wisdom than I are welcomed to suggest modification:

Wild Rice Chamomile Cream Ale:

2.5-3 gallon batch

2 lbs sweet potatos
1 lb ripe bananas
0.5 lb flaked corn
0.5 lb wild rice grits
1.5 lbs rice syrup solids
0.25 lbs clover honey
0.25 lbs maltodextrin (4 oz)

0.3 oz cascade at 60 min
1 oz chamomile at 60 min
0.7 oz saaz at 15 min

US-05 Ale Yeast

Plan: cook the corn and wild rice into a thick porridge to gelatinize their starches. Grate the sweet potatos and then blend with the bananas and a little filtered water to make "enzyme smoothie". Mix with the grain porridge and do a step mash (91-122-152, about an hour at each, maybe longer at 152 if I can stand it), then slowly raise to a boil to gelatinze the sweet potato and banana, as they do in that one paper from the 1920's to make "sweet potato syrup". Then strain into the brew kettle through my grain bag, "sparge" a few times with enough 170°F water to make up a bit over 3 gallons, add the rice syrup solids and maltodextrin and start the boil. Add the honey at flameout.

I feel fairly confident that this process should work well enough; whether it comes out like a cream ale or not, who can know? Should brew it up Friday or Saturday, after I bottle the Quarry Forest Gruit and rack the IIPA to secondary to free up a carboy. In any case, I promise to post updates as it comes along, since most of the people who've started threads on sweet potatos have vanished into the void before telling of their results . I'm hoping for a quick-maturing beer!

Is rice syrup solids just brown rice dry malt extract?

mloster said:

Is rice syrup solids just brown rice dry malt extract?

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As far as I know, yes. Or I should say, it is to BRS as DME is to LME.

Post pics of the gruit!

You're one creative brewer! I like the recipe and the mash plan is great. The only part that I would worry about is the grain bag - will it be able to effectively filter a very thick mash like that... Perhaps you're fine though. I think this kind of mash is where people get into rice-hulls in their mash tuns. I haven't tried that yet myself.

Rice hulls! That's a great idea. How much do you think I should use? 1/2 lb? I guess if I'm pureeing stuff I'll need that extra grist or I won't be able to get any water out of it.

Would chamomile tea work for this?

Since you're in San Francisco you should check out City Church--I have some good friends that work there--great guys. Some of them might even homebrew.

Hmmm.... Not sure. You might be spot on w/ your 1/2 lb, or maybe judge by how much room you'll have in the grain bag. Also check here:
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f12/rice-hulls-how-much-should-i-use-50919/.
and this one has nothing to do with rice hulls, but perhaps highlights some mistakes to avoid:
a thick/flaked-corn mash that caused problems

I can tell you from experience with pumpkin and bananas that it will take FOREVER for you to squeeze out the liquid through a grain bag. I'm inexperienced with rice hulls so I don't know if they will absorb any of the liquid or other goodies...but using an aggregate of some kind to help the liquid escape is a great idea!

Sounds delicious by the way. Good luck!

Well, since I'm using a total of 4 lbs of gluten-free grains, and the wild rice at least I can count on to NOT get gummy (at least according to Mosher's "Radical Brewing"), it seems like 1/2 lb rice hulls might do the trick...but I'll buy a full pound just in case I need more. I think also doing a "sparge" rather than squeezing seems to work better, the idea being to keep the grains from compacting. I'll definitely post my results, though! Should be brewing this up Saturday.

ChasidicCalvinist said:

Would chamomile tea work for this?

Since you're in San Francisco you should check out City Church--I have some good friends that work there--great guys. Some of them might even homebrew.

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Chamomile tea should work just fine. I managed some whole dried chamomile flowers from Whole Foods, but chamomile tea is just ground flowers, so why not? Might even be better utilization that way, like hop pellets vs. whole hops.

Brewed this up yesterday. The mash came out tasting pretty good, definitely sweet but not as sweet as a proper wort. Lots of banana aroma until the boil. I used about 1/3-lb of rice hulls and the sparge went fine. OG was 1.030, so this is gonna be a real low-gravity beer. Utah-style. Also realized (too late) that my saaz hops were higher alpha-acid than I accounted for in calculations (5.5% rather than 3.5%), so I overshot target IBU's by about 5. No big deal, but missed the style guidelines for a cream ale. Color was also a bit off--the wild rice added a kind of "grayness" that's not very appealing...hopefully it'll look better once it clears.

igliashon said:

Color was also a bit off--the wild rice added a kind of "grayness" that's not very appealing...hopefully it'll look better once it clears.

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Great update and thanks...can't wait to hear more about how this turns out. I've had that grayish green color before when using teff and quinoa; it did go away and assumed the traditional redish brown. I'm sure yours will too.

I've "fixed" non-GF brews that came in unexpectedly low (gravity) by adding LME w/in the next couple of days after brewing... I just boil it in a QT of water for about 15 min, cool it, and add it to the fermenter. I'm sure you could do the same with some GF syrup if you wanted to - Sorghum extract, tapioca syrup, molasses, etc. Especially since your IBUs came in high, with out boosting your gravity your perceived bitterness may also be a bit high. just a thought.

MariposaSouth said:

I've "fixed" non-GF brews that came in unexpectedly low (gravity) by adding LME w/in the next couple of days after brewing... I just boil it in a QT of water for about 15 min, cool it, and add it to the fermenter. I'm sure you could do the same with some GF syrup if you wanted to - Sorghum extract, tapioca syrup, molasses, etc. Especially since your IBUs came in high, with out boosting your gravity your perceived bitterness may also be a bit high. just a thought.

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There's not really space in my fermenter for another quart of liquid, but I'm expecting a ton of trub on this one from the corn and bananas, and plan to do a short stay in secondary to clear it...think it would work to toss in, say, 12 oz of rice syrup solids in the secondary, boiled in ~1/2-qt water and cooled? According to my calculations, adding that in the boil would have raised the gravity by about 0.01, which is what I would have needed to hit the target OG of 1.040.

Yeah, I think that should work. The 1 QT part is pretty arbitrary, really all you need is the minimum amount to dissolve the solids and not burn it in the boiling process. Plus, the less water you use, the more effective you'll raise the gravity. Good luck!

Racked to secondary yesterday. Mother of "Bob", did this beer ever have a lot of trub! 2", maybe 2.5"...woof! But indeed, it had cleared up nicely, all the gray had settled out and it was a nice honey color, almost exactly like the mead fermenting next to it. So I added half a pound of rice syrup solids boiled for about 10 minutes and then chilled in the freezer, decanted carefully to leave behind the cold break solids, and fermentation has resumed as of this morning. Smelled amazing, those saaz hops really come through with that spicy nose! Did not take a hydrometer reading, though, so I didn't get to sample it. Should be finished in another week, and then I'll bottle.

Great news igliashon, can't wait to hear how it finally turns out. I made a pumpkin beer once that had an absurd amount of trub...it was actually intimidating.

Well, bottled this one today, and I gotta say--it's gonna be a perfect lawnmower beer. Absolutely nailed the cream ale style, the beer is crystal-clear, pale gold with a very subtle chartreuse hint to it. The flavor is mild but very complex--floral, slightly sweet, faint hints of citrus and some round herbal overtones, a touch of spicy-sweet in the aftertaste. This one is gonna be extremely refreshing and drinkable, which is a bloody relief as I've got 5 batches of weird and very BIG beers hanging out in bottles that are totally wrong for this warm late spring weather. After so much mediocrity, I'm delighted to say that I finally made something really good. I'm enjoying the heck out of this flat room-temp hydrometer sample, when it's carbed and cold it's gonna be a real winner that could easily stand up to off-the-shelf gluten-free beers.

igliashon said:

I'm enjoying the heck out of this flat room-temp hydrometer sample, when it's carbed and cold it's gonna be a real winner that could easily stand up to off-the-shelf gluten-free beers.

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Sounds wonderful igliashon. Congrats on the success and thanks for the update...I was really interested in how this one turned out. It's inspiring!

The wife and I have experimented with bananas... but never sweet potatoes

rlbois1 said:

The wife and I have experimented with bananas... but never sweet potatoes

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Hey now, we're talking about brewing here. This is a family show!

Alright, two weeks in the bottle now. It's carbed up, but unfortunately it seems to have thinned out considerably. It's *extremely* dry, almost on the watery side. Bummer. If I were to do this one again, I would bump up just about everything except the bittering hops. More saaz hops especially. I would use at least two lbs of bananas, two lbs of sweet potato, and a pound each of flaked corn and wild rice. Also, I'd probably lightly toast the flaked corn and wild rice before mashing them, and would probably hold the mash a lot longer.