I just made an apple-banana wine with some extra ingredients. 4 gallons made with 6 lbs of peeled bananas, 2 lbs. of fuji apple cores, 2 whole lemons, a pound of regular grapes, 3 lbs of dehydrated cane syrup (raw sugar) and a couple pounds of corn-off-the-cobb that was just chillin in the freezer. Everything but the corn was organic.
The whole thing was an experiment, the apples and bananas were leavings from my two tot nephews. I decided to throw in the rest of the kitchen sink to see how it would all do, since I'm not really that fond of bananas anyway. The result isn't so bad, but because I didn't add as much sugar as I would regularly for such a large batch (usually about 2 lbs per gallon for sweet and potent results) it came out without any sweetness and not a lot of alcohol.
The banana taste barely registers until its just at the back of the tongue, the apple is a bit stronger, the raisins are there if you pay attention, and the corn makes for a bit of smokey flavour. The lemons are the strongest. Usually I use limes in my more tropical brews (such as Pineapple "Wado" or Cactus Fruit), and only a couple at that. This time I used two large whole lemons, so it serves me right to have such a strong citrusy brew.
Anyway, enough about my wine. If you're gonna do a sweet brew, you need to make sure there's carbs leftover when you decide there's enough alcohol in the batch. The way to do this is to kill off the yeast, and the simplest method I know is to let it die by alcohol poisoning. (Step in anybody and tell me a better way, if you like!)
Wine yeasts usually die off at about 18% abv. My 2 lbs per gallon recipe guarantees that there will be sugar leftover after the yeast dies off. But that can make for a really sweet wine if you're already using a sweet fruit (cherries, apples, pears, grapes, tropical fruits). Use less sugar for these, about 1 1/2 lbs per gallon. The yeast will still be killed by the 18% alcohol, but there will be little residual sugar. Anything less than 1 1/2 lbs will not kill the yeast by alcohol overdose, and your wine will not be sweet at the finish, except if you use another method to kill the action.
Here's my "Ripple" (sugar-added) wine recipe:
Per gallon:
4-5 lbs prepared fruit
2 lbs sugar
water
yeast
Slow boil the fruit for about 20 minutes in half a gallon of water (adjust for your batch size), strain fruit pieces into a muslin bag, return fruit "tea" (wort) to your boiling pot. Add sugar to the water and stir to dissolve. Pour some cold water into the "tea" until the water is lukewarm (not to exceed your batch volume.. might have to wait until the water is cooled to a reasonable high room temperature). After cooled, pour the "tea" into your primary fermenter. I always like to add the fruit back into the batch for a primary ferment (usually I'm a one-ferment brewer, so it stays in until I decide to remove it.. about half way through). To do this, you might want to adjust your batch volume to allow for the bag, by volume a little over half a gallon, or use a larger fermenter container. If so, add the muslin bag, tied up, to the batch for the primary ferment (about a week). Rehydrate your yeast in a bit of warm "tea" from your pot, making sure it'll work by watching for proper action (a film of airy foam should develop within an hour). This can be done while waiting for your "tea" to cool to a room temperature. When ready, add your yeast and stash your primary out of sunlight for about a week, then proceed as usual for the next steps.
These guys can give you pointers from there. I'm a "corner-of-the-tent" homebrewer. My setup includes a plastic bucket, a plastic (unscented) trash bag, and a thick rubber band. That's it. I'm not a primary/secondary brewer, though I do such for friends and family when they provide the equipment. Most of my fruits come to me free from farms I'm working on in the summertime. I've made my "ripple" out of just about any fruit you could imagine grows north of 30 degrees latitude.
