Every few years, someone decides to create a banana beer and people respond saying either "Urgh, why would you do that?" or "Wow, that sounds fantastic!".
Summarising the earlier discussions:
I brewed the following recipe last week and have just added additional bananas to the primary fermenter a week after fermentation kicked off.
Brew Method: BIAB
Style Name: Strong Bitter
Boil Time: 60 min
Batch Size: 18 liters (fermentor volume)
Boil Size: 21.8 liters
Boil Gravity: 1.038
Efficiency: 70% (brew house)
STATS:
Original Gravity: 1.047
Final Gravity: 1.012
ABV (standard): 4.58%
IBU (tinseth): 23.01
SRM (morey): 9.39
FERMENTABLES:
2.8 kg - United Kingdom - Maris Otter Pale (59.6%)
0.5 kg - German - Munich Light (10.6%)
0.4 kg - United Kingdom - Crystal 45L (8.5%)
1 kg - Ripe bananas, peeled, pureed (21.3%)
HOPS:
20 g - East Kent Goldings, Type: Pellet, AA: 5.4, Use: Boil for 60 min, IBU: 16.89
20 g - East Kent Goldings, Type: Pellet, AA: 5.4, Use: Boil for 10 min, IBU: 6.12
MASH GUIDELINES:
1) Infusion, Temp: 66 C, Time: 90 min, Amount: 18.4 L
2) Sparge, Temp: 79 C, Time: 10 min, Amount: 5 L, Batch sparge
OTHER INGREDIENTS:
1 kg - Bananas, pureed, skins on, Time: 2 weeks, Use: Primary after 1 week of fermentation
YEAST:
Mangrove Jack - Bavarian Wheat Yeast M20
Starter: No
Form: Dry
Attenuation (avg): 73%
Flocculation: Low
Optimum Temp: 15 - 30 C
Fermentation Temp: 25 C
Pitch Rate: 0.35 (M cells / ml / deg P)
This will be stronger than indicated in the recipe. I used 5 PPG as a custom ingredient on the basis of a research paper I found. Others report it's more like 12 PPG. I also haven't included the secondary bananas in the OG calculations. But even 12 PPG is a third of the gravity contribution that you get from the same weight of grain (possibly due to all the water that bananas contain), so it won't be wildly stronger than anticipated.
The yeast strain I chose because it has good tolerance for high temperature (I'm controlling temp at 25C, reducing to 23C after a week and then reducing to around 10-12C to cold condition for another 2-3 weeks). It's also a hefe strain, which I was hoping would emphasise bananas without me needing to add more.
So far the banana flavour from the banana in the mash is very very limited (as you might expect, given the wort was then boiled for an hour), but present as a subtle sour tang and mouthfeel. Oddly, banana aroma from the yeast is pretty much absent. The beer tastes very much like a sweetish hefeweizen. I'm hoping that this will die down as the yeast drops out (very cloudy still, as it's only just coming to the end of primary and the yeast is a low flocculating strain). The overall impression of the beer at the moment is not hugely pleasant (combination of yeast, a higher than usual hop impression for a hefe, and some sulphur that hasn't yet died down) but it's only a week old and still fermenting so I'll give it a break!
To add the further 1kg of bananas, I ripened them until the skin started splitting and they had little black spots (but still in the kind of state where you might happily eat them, not to the black and oozing stage), cut them skins-on and blended them to a puree, sealed the puree in a freezer/ziplock bag and immersed in gently boiling water for about an hour to pasteurise and perhaps convert some more of the starch to sugars, then cooled and carefully emptied into the beer in the primary fermenter, stirring gently with a whisk to break up the lumps.
I'll post a few updates as the batch progresses. I intend to transfer to secondary in another week to try to filter out what I'm sure will be a very messy selection of floating banana bits and sunken yeast cake. Then I'll cold condition for a couple of weeks to try to get some of that yeast to fall out. If I had finings I would use them.
If it all goes banana-shaped, I'll try again using bananas in the mash but using banana extract instead (in the UK the brand that's easily available online is called Foodie Flavours). This should be pretty straightforward as the bananas really didn't affect the lautering process for me. In comparison to more fibrous additives (I'm looking at you, pumpkin!), it was a dream.
Summarising the earlier discussions:
- Wells brewery in the UK makes a beer called Banana Bread Beer. It's a fairly sweet and inoffensive amber ale with low hop presence and a banana tang. Sold in clear bottles, filtered and/or pasteurised. If you find some, wait for it to warm up before drinking. They produce this using some bananas in the mash and then banana extract/flavouring after/during conditioning.
- Hefeweizens and a few Belgian styles sometimes have a banana-like aroma. This is from a preponderance of isoamyl acetate ester produced by the (different) yeasts that are used in these beers, and from treating the yeast in just the right (or wrong!) way during fermentation to favour this flavour compound over others. People have recommended fermenting warmer for more banana flavour and to under-pitch.
- German pubs sometimes sell hefeweizens that have banana juice or puree added when they are served. I consider this cheating.
- I've come across one or two other banana beers (once at a brewpub in Prague). These seem to be made with banana essence/flavouring, but what do I know?
- There are also banana wines (and it's not totally uncommon to include a bit of banana in other wines to give them body). These range from the traditional East African banana wine, which is spontaneously fermented (some grain is added 'to aid fermentation', presumably because it contains a particular type of wild saccaromyces yeast... but that's just a guess) to more cautious homebrew versions that are pasteurised by boiling or using sulphite and fermented with selected yeast.
I brewed the following recipe last week and have just added additional bananas to the primary fermenter a week after fermentation kicked off.
Brew Method: BIAB
Style Name: Strong Bitter
Boil Time: 60 min
Batch Size: 18 liters (fermentor volume)
Boil Size: 21.8 liters
Boil Gravity: 1.038
Efficiency: 70% (brew house)
STATS:
Original Gravity: 1.047
Final Gravity: 1.012
ABV (standard): 4.58%
IBU (tinseth): 23.01
SRM (morey): 9.39
FERMENTABLES:
2.8 kg - United Kingdom - Maris Otter Pale (59.6%)
0.5 kg - German - Munich Light (10.6%)
0.4 kg - United Kingdom - Crystal 45L (8.5%)
1 kg - Ripe bananas, peeled, pureed (21.3%)
HOPS:
20 g - East Kent Goldings, Type: Pellet, AA: 5.4, Use: Boil for 60 min, IBU: 16.89
20 g - East Kent Goldings, Type: Pellet, AA: 5.4, Use: Boil for 10 min, IBU: 6.12
MASH GUIDELINES:
1) Infusion, Temp: 66 C, Time: 90 min, Amount: 18.4 L
2) Sparge, Temp: 79 C, Time: 10 min, Amount: 5 L, Batch sparge
OTHER INGREDIENTS:
1 kg - Bananas, pureed, skins on, Time: 2 weeks, Use: Primary after 1 week of fermentation
YEAST:
Mangrove Jack - Bavarian Wheat Yeast M20
Starter: No
Form: Dry
Attenuation (avg): 73%
Flocculation: Low
Optimum Temp: 15 - 30 C
Fermentation Temp: 25 C
Pitch Rate: 0.35 (M cells / ml / deg P)
This will be stronger than indicated in the recipe. I used 5 PPG as a custom ingredient on the basis of a research paper I found. Others report it's more like 12 PPG. I also haven't included the secondary bananas in the OG calculations. But even 12 PPG is a third of the gravity contribution that you get from the same weight of grain (possibly due to all the water that bananas contain), so it won't be wildly stronger than anticipated.
The yeast strain I chose because it has good tolerance for high temperature (I'm controlling temp at 25C, reducing to 23C after a week and then reducing to around 10-12C to cold condition for another 2-3 weeks). It's also a hefe strain, which I was hoping would emphasise bananas without me needing to add more.
So far the banana flavour from the banana in the mash is very very limited (as you might expect, given the wort was then boiled for an hour), but present as a subtle sour tang and mouthfeel. Oddly, banana aroma from the yeast is pretty much absent. The beer tastes very much like a sweetish hefeweizen. I'm hoping that this will die down as the yeast drops out (very cloudy still, as it's only just coming to the end of primary and the yeast is a low flocculating strain). The overall impression of the beer at the moment is not hugely pleasant (combination of yeast, a higher than usual hop impression for a hefe, and some sulphur that hasn't yet died down) but it's only a week old and still fermenting so I'll give it a break!
To add the further 1kg of bananas, I ripened them until the skin started splitting and they had little black spots (but still in the kind of state where you might happily eat them, not to the black and oozing stage), cut them skins-on and blended them to a puree, sealed the puree in a freezer/ziplock bag and immersed in gently boiling water for about an hour to pasteurise and perhaps convert some more of the starch to sugars, then cooled and carefully emptied into the beer in the primary fermenter, stirring gently with a whisk to break up the lumps.
I'll post a few updates as the batch progresses. I intend to transfer to secondary in another week to try to filter out what I'm sure will be a very messy selection of floating banana bits and sunken yeast cake. Then I'll cold condition for a couple of weeks to try to get some of that yeast to fall out. If I had finings I would use them.
If it all goes banana-shaped, I'll try again using bananas in the mash but using banana extract instead (in the UK the brand that's easily available online is called Foodie Flavours). This should be pretty straightforward as the bananas really didn't affect the lautering process for me. In comparison to more fibrous additives (I'm looking at you, pumpkin!), it was a dream.
