Banana Wine

[LabRatBrewer]

Made 3.5 gallons. OG 1.102. Stomping the bananas feels weird between the toes.

 

[Ike]

WTH... Murphy's Law, I guess...

I can go to the store, buy a bunch of GREEN bananas, and it seems like they're sickly brown by later that afternoon. But here, the ONE time I actually WANT them to brown up, they just sit on the counter, barely getting brown specks, day after day, LAUGHING at me. C'MON! I WANNA MAKE MY WINE, ALREADY!

Well, we'll see who laughs last...

 

[Shnick]

Paper bag

 

[lowrider_rt2000]

Paper bag

X2 paper bag!

 

[lowrider_rt2000]

Started my dirty mop water bucket last night! My house smelled soooo good!

 

[lowrider_rt2000]

Dirty mop water lol

View attachment 1441711287385.jpg

 

[Mismost]

I made a gallon batch of Banana Wine...spiced with cinnamon, vanilla, and a couple of cloves. Prettiest wine I have made so far and tasted pretty good too. It has been bottled since Feb., will pull the cork on a bottle this Christmas.

 

[Tsuyako]

Sorry if this has been addressed already, but I could I replace some of the sugar with brown sugar? I stared this last night (basically just moved banana's to the fridge to thaw) but stopped when I realized I didn't have enough white sugar. I'll go to the store and get some more white sugar tonight, but it was just a thought I had last night.

 

[Yooper]

Sorry if this has been addressed already, but I could I replace some of the sugar with brown sugar? I stared this last night (basically just moved banana's to the fridge to thaw) but stopped when I realized I didn't have enough white sugar. I'll go to the store and get some more white sugar tonight, but it was just a thought I had last night.

You could- but I think fermented brown sugar has a terrible flavor. it's a flavor of molasses but without sweetness, and I think it's horrid. It could work in a dark ale (maybe) if you didn't hate molasses, but not in a light wine.

 

[Tsuyako]

Thanks yoop, I decided to give it a try anyway and I'll make another batch without it. It smells delcious!

 

[meatcleaver]

started a 1 gallon batch of this back in February.
bottled today 5x750ml

 

[Meadmaker]

Thanks for the recipe Yooper. Everyone loves the stuff!

 

[jwelch1103]

I made a 6 gallon batch of this last week. Ended up with about 5.9 gallons of must in the primary at an OG of 1.122. Pitched the wine yeast on September 23 and as of last night the SG was at 1.011 and it still tasted quite sweet I don't remember the exact Lalvin wine yeast I used but I seem to recall that the package said it was good up to 14%.

I am concerned now that the yeast will crap out before it is fully attenuated and am wondering if it was a mistake not to dilute down to somewhere around a 1.100 OG. Using brewersfriend dilution calculator, had I diluted this 5.9 gallons with approximately 1.1 gallons of water the OG would have been around 1.100.

Is it too late to dilute this?

My intuition tells me it isn't but I wanted to float this idea here and see if anyone with more vintning experience could advise me. Thank you.

 

[G-Pong]

New to the wine thing, but when it says "may taste after 6 months, matures up to 2 years", when does that clock start? Is it from when you create the wine day 1, bottling day, or somewhere in between?

Thanks,

 

[Tsuyako]

New to the wine thing, but when it says "may taste after 6 months, matures up to 2 years", when does that clock start? Is it from when you create the wine day 1, bottling day, or somewhere in between?

Thanks,

I'm new too, as I understand it that time frame is from the day you bottle.

 

[Zelmor]

I have a question regarding leaving the skin on the fruit when boiling and preparing the pulp. This doesn't look like a good idea to me due to the pesticide and fungicide used while transporting bananas from the fields, just like with oranges and other citrus.

It might be worth mentioning in the OP to use organic bananas, or dismissing the use of peel from the recipe.

 

[Homercidal]

Odd. My last batch is not too clear compared to the previous batches. It's been in the bottle a couple of months.

And it's a bit sweeter and more banana flavor than the previous batches. No hint of carbonation, so I doubt the yeast is going to cause issues. (Plus I bottled in beer bottles because it's easier.)

And for complete disclosure, the test sample I tasted came from the last bottle I filled and it was not quite filled to the top.

 

[HappyFermentations]

Really thinking about trying this out this week. Biggest decision is whether I should do a 5G or 1G batch. I'd hate to do a 1 gallon and find out that it's delicious in two years and only have a few bottles ready - but I'm also hesitant to tie up a 5g carboy for that long. So many decisions!

 

[thadeus_d3]

Really thinking about trying this out this week. Biggest decision is whether I should do a 5G or 1G batch. I'd hate to do a 1 gallon and find out that it's delicious in two years and only have a few bottles ready - but I'm also hesitant to tie up a 5g carboy for that long. So many decisions!

Do 5 gallons for now and 5 more gallons within the next month. You won't regret it.

 

[Yooper]

I made a 6 gallon batch of this last week. Ended up with about 5.9 gallons of must in the primary at an OG of 1.122. Pitched the wine yeast on September 23 and as of last night the SG was at 1.011 and it still tasted quite sweet I don't remember the exact Lalvin wine yeast I used but I seem to recall that the package said it was good up to 14%.

I am concerned now that the yeast will crap out before it is fully attenuated and am wondering if it was a mistake not to dilute down to somewhere around a 1.100 OG. Using brewersfriend dilution calculator, had I diluted this 5.9 gallons with approximately 1.1 gallons of water the OG would have been around 1.100.

Is it too late to dilute this?

My intuition tells me it isn't but I wanted to float this idea here and see if anyone with more vintning experience could advise me. Thank you.

I'd wait and see. It may be too hot for a while, or it might be great. Diluting may or may not be beneficial, but you can do it later if you want to dilute.

 

[raketemensch]

I had made a 2-gallon experimental banana batch about a month ago, which I made without peels and just blending the peeled brown bananas with some tepid water. I pitched some EC-1118 and 5 pounds of sugar and let it go.

It's pretty good, and peaked at 7.4%ABV. I wasn't going for anything full-on, I just had an empty old Mr. Beer fermenter, so I figured I'd give it a shot.

I'm going to give this recipe a shot, minus the raisins, mainly because raisins are evil, foul things that should be banned from the Earth.

The other change that I'm going to try is using WLP300 hefeweizen yeast, the one with the banana esters. I've got a vial of it coming tomorrow.

The big win here, though, was that the first store I stopped at wanted 79cents/pound for bananas, so I continued on to Stop and Shop, where they were 49cents/pound. The produce guy was stocking bananas, so just for the heck of it I asked him what they do with them when they brown up, and he directed me to a back hallway I'd never seen, where they had already-browned bananas for something like 10-15cents/lb. I loaded up on enough to do a 5-gallon ferment.

The one thing that seems odd to me is bringing it to a boil -- it seems like taking it above 140 might kill off any of the natural enzymes from the bananas that would help you with conversion?

 

[Ike]

Really thinking about trying this out this week. Biggest decision is whether I should do a 5G or 1G batch. I'd hate to do a 1 gallon and find out that it's delicious in two years and only have a few bottles ready - but I'm also hesitant to tie up a 5g carboy for that long. So many decisions!

My very humble suggestion: base the size of your primary on your available secondary containers.

Example: if you start in a one gallon bottle, when you start racking off the lees and to and from the raisins, you'll end up having to top off a lot, either with water or another wine. Further example: what I did was start with about a 3 gallon batch. At the first rack (at 7 days) I was able to rack into two one gallon bottles, and a spare 1000ml bottle. My hope is that oncce I've racked off the raisins, I'll be able to use the 1000ml bottle to top off the two one gallon bottles, so I won't have to top off with wine or water.

 

[Ike]

Hey everybody: with regard to the concerns that have been posted about the sulfur used to treat the white raisins interfering with the yeast:

Any reason I can just use green grapes?


...I was going to try washing them in star-san and dehydrating them to make my own sulfite-free grapes, but then didn't quite see a reason to go through the effort of taking all the water OUT, just to have them soak up a bunch of my wine.

Thanks;

Ike

 

[Zelmor]

Would worry more about the vegetabloe oils they coat raisins with so they wouldn't stick. My 5 liter batch went rancid due to the raisins last year. And oils you cannot wash off with water.

I would just go with crushed grapes or grape juice, depending which one you have access to.

 

[lowrider_rt2000]

So after really cleaning my floors I decided to put this into a carboy haha. Fast forward to a week ago. It was time to add raisins. I did a sample taste and I think NASA wants some to launch the space shuttle next time. I've had moonshine not as hot as this but yet this was sweet and very banana tasting. I decided to add the raisons anyways. The 1st 2 days the raisons were in had no action. The 3rd day was well let's say, beyond active. Thank god I put the carboy in a 6gal bucket! My airlock is filled with banana fuel. This is bubbling like crazy! Is this normal for soooo much action?

View attachment 1450012627630.jpg

 

[Tsuyako]

My banana wine with 1/2 white 1/2 brown sugar. Tastes like rocket fuel when I racked it last weekend but I can it's going to be delicious.

View attachment 1450400707612.jpg

 

[roberto188]

I made this about a year ago with a slight variation on Jack's Website to use orange and lemon zests. As most people said, it was like rocket fuel when done. But once back-sweetened ever so slightly, and aged 6 months+ it was a buttery smooth white with hints of banana. Delicious! Also, I had used Montrachet yeast. I have found Montrachet and Cote-de-Blanc seem to maintain nice fruit flavors. I've also found that Champagne yeast doesn't yield so much fruit flavor.

 

[roberto188]

Tasted a 5 month old sample of my 3rd batch and it's incredible. It tastes much better than previous batches already and the older batches are 2+ years old. The only difference is that I washed the bananas beforehand (which I also did on my 2nd batch), halved the raisins and used Montrachet yeast instead of Red Star Champagne. This seems to be a winning combination for me, so I'm going to do this going forward.

+1 on the Montrachet yeast. Great flavor.

 

[beer_blogger]

I brewed this up in November 2015 and followed the instructions other than excluding the raisins and used Cote De Blancs yeast Its amazing to see what started out as carpet cleaner water turn into a brilliantly clear golden batch of deliciousness! I pulled a few samples after primary was finished and like many of the others on here, found that it tasted somewhat sweet, but very hot with alcohol and the banana flavor made its presence felt in the aftertaste. I'm pumped to taste this in a year or 2 after it mellows out. And I've got to keep this one brewing constantly, its a definite keeper in the rotation!

 

[eigua]

I'm curious to know how much sugar actually comes out of the bananas when boiled like a tea as directed by this recipe. Has anyone done a gravity reading before adding the sugar? Or is it mainly just to pick up some banana flavor?

I am currently fermenting a 2 gallon batch of a very simple banana wine, but I used a very different process. My goal was to make as banana-y a wine as I possibly could. I wanted as much of the liquid as possible to come from the bananas and not added water. I ended up using 6.5ish lbs of bananas per gallon, blended it with a stick blender, held it at various mashing temperatures for a total of about 2 hours (probably didn't help convert starches since I didn't have peel in it, but I thought I might as well try), boiled it, cooled it, filtered and squeezed it as best I could (VERY time consuming and difficult, squeezing the juice from the banana fiber!), then boiling again, and finally pitching. The ~13 lbs of bananas yielded exactly 1 gallon of puree, and after all was said and done, I added probably just over 1 gallon of water for the 2g batch since I was able to get so much water out of the bananas themselves. (I squeezed the fiber so dry it was like Play Doh.)

In addition to the bananas and water, I added 4.5 lbs of sugar to bring the OG to 1.120/1.130 (2 different 1 gallon jugs). I also used some amylase enzyme (just for good measure), Fermax yeast nutrient, and pectic enzyme, but I did not add any raisins, tannin, acid blend, etc. Yeast is Cote des blancs.

I do expect that the OG was thrown off some by the fine banana fiber pulp still present in the wine, so I'm not really expecting to get the predicted 17-19% ABV (though, if there really is enough sugar to go that high, the CDB yeast would likely die off before that and leave a sweet wine, which would be fine by me.)

As I said, this was a terribly difficult, messy, and time consuming process, but I'm hoping it will be super banana flavored -- I'm imagining almost a slightly syrupy consistency with heavy banana flavor, sweet, and alcoholic like a port. (I may fortify with brandy or something to bump up the ABV in the end if it comes out well but the yeast dies out.) If, on the other hand, it doesn't come out like I'm imagining, it would sure be a heck of a lot easier to make it the tea bag way instead with less banana.

One other side effect of the massive amount of banana in the recipe is that my jugs have overflowed 4 times already (3 for one jug, 1 for the other) filling up the airlock and spilling over during fermentation due to the fine banana fiber getting pushed to the top of the jug and causing a bubble ladder to form.