chocolate "banana" stout w/german yeast?

[dandroid001]

I'm thinking of taking an existing chocolate stout recipe & pitching a german yeast that'll spit out lots of banana esters fermented around 80 degrees. Thoughts?

 

[Mojzis]

One of these is on my brew list. I haven't worked out a recipe yet. I was thinking of a stout or porter recipe with chocolate malt and maybe chocolate in the boil. Bavarian hefe yeast. Ferment all the way (~72), add 5-6 pureed bananas into secondary.

 

[dandroid001]

I second the pureed bananas in the 2°!
I'll definitely split the batch @ that point though... I really want to see how much banana flavor i can get from the yeast alone.
Never dealt with fresh bananas in me brew. Any idea how many would be ideal for a 2.5 gal batch? & are there contamination issues?

 

[danielofthedale]

At Red Brick Brewing they just had an employee brewoff and my favorite was the Fat Elvis which was a peanut butter and banana dopelbock. It tasted just like a PB and Banana sandwich! I asked the brewer about it and they said they used hefe yeast to give all the banana flavor.

 

[brewer98]

I did similar with a dunkelweizen. Added .5lbs chocolate malt and kept the fermentation around 75-78 degrees for two days. then added 4 bananas into secondary, either cut up and freeze/thaw and put in or puree to get best flavor out of it. Turned out pretty good.


I've used this yeast type before trying to pump out banana flavor, but it wasn't as much as i was hoping for, so second time around i added in bananas.

 

[dandroid001]

Ok! All i needed was knowledge this has been attempted before. Thanks for the feedback- the ingredients are ordered, so for better or worse, this is happening :-D
But to be clear, i don't need to sanitize the bananas? Would giving the puree a 2-day vodka bath aid in extraction & sanitize?

 

[Mojzis]

I wouldn't. I would just peel, puree and toss in.

 

[dandroid001]

alright- 2 days into fermentation and it smells like i was hoping! Made a .5L starter from half a packet of a german hefeweizen dry yeast a few hours before pitching. About 8 hours later, the krausen blasted out of the airlock like an infected blowhole! It's been churning away in the 82deg. laundry room since.
I'll update later if anyone cares... and if anyone really cares, i'll post the recipe.

 

[Mojzis]

I'm curious as to how much (lb/gallon) you used and how you added them in.

 

[markus2982]

I know I would love to see the recipe. Sounds like a tasty idea.

 

[dandroid001]

I'm curious as to how much (lb/gallon) you used and how you added them in.

I mashed up 9 bananas/5 gallons... crammed them into the carboy after I racked to secondary. If I had to guess, I'd estimate it was about 4lb/5gallons.

But beware! their addition kicked off another round of active fermentation! enough to pop the airlock out.

 

[dandroid001]

I know I would love to see the recipe. Sounds like a tasty idea.

recipe for a 5+ gallon all-grain batch
9 lb marris otter malt
12oz chocolate malt
4 oz crystal malt
2 oz black roasted barley
2 oz black patent malt

@ beginning of boil:
1 oz galena
8 oz malto-dextrin
1 lb demerara sugar -*(in retrospect, i wouldn't have done this... too much -OH really thinned the mouthfeel)

@flameout:
1 oz cocoa powder

pitched Danstar Munich wheat beer yeast
fermented @ 82F

...1 week later...
+-4 lbs crushed bananas en route to secondary.

OG: 1.065
FG: 1.009ish *adding those bananas (dextrins) really improved the mouthfeel, but throws off any accurate measurement of -OH content.