Banana Bread Ale

[DeathBrewer]

Hell yeah. I don't think I'll have time to brew this for a while...too many beers planned. But I'd like to fine-tune it at some point...see if I can perfectly replicate that "banana bread" aroma.

 

[thataintchicken]

will be brewing a variation of this today or tomorrow.
I think I can get that aroma you were seeking... the plan will be revealed along with pics.

Now, the question is whether or not to break out the cooler and other AG gear or go stovetop AG? I'm thinking stovetop.

 

[DeathBrewer]

Stovetop will work fine for this beer. What the hell have you been up to? You haven't been insulting anyone in the tap room lately

 

[thataintchicken]

Stovetop will work fine for this beer. What the hell have you been up to? You haven't been insulting anyone in the tap room lately

work work and more work -- also writing another screenplay in my off hours.

I did spend today cleaning the patio, procuring CO2 and propane then prepping the smoker for some pig and moo cow. Tomorrow is brew and smoker day.

 

[thataintchicken]

BBA is boiling away. For reference purposes, I am using Deathbrewer's Stovetop method.

Here is the recipe I used - I added vanilla bean, dehydrated banana chips ( thank you SWMBO ), lost some grains and did the First Wort Hop shuffle with Santiam -- one of my favorite hybrid hops :rockin:

I'd do the No-Chill thing but my Cubes have not arrived.

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TAC's Banana Bread Ale Attempt.

6 lbs Wheat malt
3 lbs Munich
1 lbs. Flaked oats
.25 lbs. Carapils
.25 lbs. Crystal 60L

FWH with 1.25 oz Santiam Hops ( should give it a balanced sweet & spicy aroma ).
1 Vanilla Bean ( from my home-made vanilla extract Mason Jar ) added to Primary
1 oz Dehydrated Banana Chips added to primary.

Fermented on top of a Big Fat WLP300 cake from my last Hefeweizen batch.

______________________

It will be a little lighter in color than a traditional Dunkelweizen, but should taste incredible. A little sweeter with a malty, bready bite to it.
I didn't have the spare time to go to the LHBS to get the chocolate malt ( silly me, I thought I had a pound of it in the grain drawer ) ... so I used up my stockpiled wheat beer resources.

 

[DeathBrewer]

Good recipe. I think the vanilla bean will exemplify the "banana bread."

 

[thataintchicken]

Good recipe. I think the vanilla bean will exemplify the "banana bread."

Thanks.
This thing started bubbling hard 45 minutes after it hit the yeast cake. :rockin:
The aroma from the blowoff bottle smells like a banana bread factory.

Yes. I am a sniffer.

 

[DavidSteel]

I wish I had a picture of SWMBO's face when she experienced a Dunkelweizen Krausen kicking in while in the condo :rockin:
She called me at work, saying my beer exploded into that little cider bottle with the tube in it.. is it supposed to do that? It smell yeasty , like bread.. is that good?


lol.

Hahaha, win stuff

 

[BA_from_GA]

good idea. nutty will be ny next step, depending on how this tastes.

mmm.. yes indeed. This just moved to the top of my "coming soon" brew list. I like the idea of nuts also (hehe) Maybe hazelnuts or pecans? and the vanilla bean sounds enticing as well. I've done vanilla beans before, but never nuts, any suggestion on how to utilize the nut flavors? Boil, Primary, Secondary? It's supposed to be a cloudy brew right, would a secondary detract from that?


Thanks, Looks great, can't wait to brew this one.

 

[splifs]

Just brewed this last night, smells great, is fermenting like crazy now, had to swap to a blow off as it was blowing out of the airlock when I got home

 

[zman]

What did you get as your FG?

 

[Pete79]

What did you get as your FG?

I just checked my partial mash version, after two weeks it is down to 1.015.

deathbrewer,

The banana aroma and flavor is very faint at this point. I fermented at 72 degrees. Should I have gone higher? (Still tastes like it is going to be a damn fine beer)

 

[stromam]

Not sure if this is gonna work out like I hoped. I brewed the same all grain recipe as you posted and pitched the vial of WLP300 yeast. It took about 30 hours for the lag phase after which it only took about another 30 hours to ferment. The aroma coming off the airlock was fruity, but not terribly bananay. I tasted it today (i know, bad me but I was curious) and i didn't really taste any banana. Fermented between 72 and 75 the whole time. Is the banana something i should have noticed by now? I feel like there may be some diacetyl (never tasted it before, but is that what makes it taste like band-aids?) Will patience pay off or should I try to maybe add some banana to the secondary? If so any recommendations as to how? Thanks for the help.

 

[DeathBrewer]

It may be faint, but will still be a damn fine beer. If there was a big lag phase and it struggled, you might actually get more fruitiness out of it. Let me know when it's done and how it worked out.

 

[Sum1Stu]

Ive, always wanted to do this recipe...especially for the holdays, but im too late!! The problem, was the getting the yeast, im going to have to order it online no one carries it. Im gonna just go ahead and make this ale, even though it will be partial mash.

I seriously, would give anything for one of those ales right about now!!

Deathbrewer, you mention possibilty of adding bannanas during ferment, why ? Does the yeast produce only a hint of bannana flavour ?

Why is this yeast so expensive 10$ a pack ? Does anyone propagate this type of yeast because, at that price, I cant buy it, and not propagate it

 

[stromam]

Bottled it last week and just couldn't wait to taste, so I did. I was very concerned that this might be a completely botched batch (2nd attempt at all grain, 6th batch ever), but wow was I surprised.

I didn't get the strong banana I was hoping for, but it is there. I fermented at about 72-75 F and pitched straight a vial of WLP300 (30 hour lag).

My friend has been chomping at the bit to get me to release this beer, but I think i'm gonna hold onto it for another week or two, it can only help right?

I'm a little sad I didn't get the uberbanana I was hoping for, but its still awesome. Thanks Deathbrewer.

Oh, also, should this be poured like a hefeweizen (swirl the last 1/5 to get the settled yeast)?

Edit: Second note, like I said this is still only my 6th batch ever, so i'm still kind of a newbie. When I bought ingredients for the recipe i used straight ounce for ounce hops, then realized after that the alpha acids were way higher (almost 2x) on my bittering hops than yours. Does that mean that my beer is (approximately) twice the IBU of yours? If so in the future do I just do a straight ratio to get the same bitterness (in this case use 1/2 as much)? Thanks again.

 

[Elaelap]

Brewed a similar type this past weekend. I cut the Munic down to 2lbs and thew in 2lbs of Pale 2-row. I changed the hops to Hallertau, and added 1oz of Hazlenut extract in the primary.

More of an experimental beer, but it tasted great post boil, and the WL300 yeast took off within 24 hours. Keeping this around 70, so hopefully we'll get some banana flavors in there.

The color was faily dark, almost like a Dunkle. I'd figure this might be closer to a Hazelnut Dunkle than anything

Will let you know how it turns out with some pics.

 

[Brewinator]

Hey DB,

I am really adverse to roasty-toasty flavors. Can one leave out the chocolate and still get good results?

Did you ever use actual bananas? I've seen this in grocery stores and always wanted to use it:

http://www.margiesbrands.com/produc...d60category_id16optioncom_virtuemartitemid35/

british chocolate to get that chewy, bready profile in a dunkelweizen.

 

[DeathBrewer]

I suppose you could do without. I don't know what I would replace it with...maybe some biscuit malt or brown malt.

I've never used bananas, but if I did I would mash them. That syrup looks like it might be tasty...I wonder how fermentable it is. It might leave the beer sweet if it doesn't ferment, but that could be good in small quantity.

 

[Pat_13]

Any more follow ups?

I will be brewing this this weekend. Has anyone added victory to the recipe?

 

[Goingforsound]

It's not smelling like bananas at all, not tasting either

My fermentation was done between 70-72 it was probably tow low

 

[joekerr1]

I bought all the ingredients today to do a partial mash with this. I can't wait. I do have a question though. How long did you leave it in the fermenter before you bottled it?

 

[DeathBrewer]

3 weeks in the primary and straight to bottle for about 6 weeks.

 

[joekerr1]

Thanks for the quick response. I do have to say the way you also explained how to do a partial mash made it easy to go from extract to that so thanks for the tutorial.

 

[JBrady]

well just ordered the stuff for this one, i'm thinking of using a banana or two somewhere in the mix. Not sure if I should mashing them, boil them, or add them to the primary though.

 

[DeathBrewer]

I'd mash 'em. You're not going to get much flavor from them regardless, but the only way you'll get sugars out of them is to mash. They will just make a mess in your boil or primary and will impart little to no flavor and perhaps some unwanted proteins and flavor.

Like I said, you won't get much from them anyway, but it certainly adds to the fun.

I still have to make my Bathory Bathtub Ale with blood sausage in the mash!

 

[joekerr1]

Well it has been fermenting for a week now and smells great. I have kept it at 73. I ended up having to build a chiller for my batches because the house was getting way too hot. So now it stays at a constant 71 and is working like a charm.

 

[pavyaz19]

We just brewed this Sunday. Our new method, since there are two of us, is to brew 10 gallons of each beer we make so we each get 5 gallons of our own. Then, of course, we brew two batches. So, a twenty gallon brew day is behind us and we're looking forward to doing it again.

Our first beer is a really hoppy red and the second is this Banana Bread Ale.

We made one major mistake which was only buying one vial of the yeast. We had to pour half of the vial into one carboy of 5-gallon wort, and the other half of the vial into the other carboy.

We were pretty worried about it but it started fermenting normally within 15 hours... which was the time it took for the properly pitched hoppy red to ferment.

And now I just read the post that underpitching adds to the banana flavor! Looks like we lucked out on accident.

The garage is 72 degrees. Hopefully that's warm enough.

 

[DeathBrewer]

underpitching will definitely bring forth more strangled banana! :cross:

shake those suckers until they stop bubbling. keep those yeasties at work!

 

[JBrady]

I brewed this one about 7 weeks ago, I was unable to pull alot of banana flavor out of the yeasts fermenting at 71-72, but this has turned out to be a awesome dunkelweizen none the less. Great recipe even though I missed the Banana Bread flavors.