Banana wine/beer
 

I have seen a couple recipes floating out there on the internet for banana wine. Do any of the home brewers / home wine makers have any suggestions ? I'd like to hear from personal experiences rather than questionable recipes on the net.

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

We have a couple wine makers here on the board. Here is the search result for "wine"
http://www.bananas.org/search.php?searchid=7348

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

I dont know what these recipes call for but the bananas used to make beer and wine are a specialzed group of African bananas that you cant just go buy plants of, much less fruit. I would imagine standard Cavendish are much too sweet for that use, the ones in that group actually are not even reffered to as "Dessert", "Cooking", or "Plantain" but as "Beer", although they are usually within and derived from cooking and plantain bananas.

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

Gabe, Joe was talking about making a dry wine with California Gold.

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

Actually, even the cavendish bananas don't have enough sugars and acids to make good wine, that is why sugars are added in order to achieve a biologically stable wine content of at least 11% ABV. But bananas make decent beer. Bananas are recommended to be hydrolyzed (aka cooking in weak acid) even if they are the sweetest cavendish, it is necessary to hydrolyze the starches and other complex carbs and then add enzymes to yield more sugar for fermentation. If you don't cook even the sweet bananas and treat with enzymes, you will have hazy wines. Simply hydrolyzing it, will make clear wine wonders from bananas.

From the most reliable nutrition data ever (http://www.nutritiondata.com/facts-C00001-01c20Tm.html), a fresh banana fruit without the peel, a serving is 225 grams and contains 28 grams of sugar, and that is only 12.4% sugar content, and if you include the peel, the sugar content would be dramatically lower. The 12.4% sugar content and without adding any water to banana pulp, and assuming we ferment this, would only yield 5.3% potential alcohol (PA) by volume, using the UC Davis formula: PA=((Brix-3)×SG)×0.59

Most literature from the sites that do not have scientific credibility or non-peer reviewed lists the banana as having a sugar content of 17%, but even so, the PA would translate to 7.8% abv, still a very unstable wine.

That is why you have to add sugar to all kinds of bananas to bring the Specific Gravity of your broth to at least 1.085 to achieve a PA of 11.1%. This is a no-brainer thing to do when adjusting sugar content of the actual cultivar you are using, if you have a hydrometer, which I do when making wines from fresh fruits.

With respect to starchy plantain types, the process is more involved as you will have to use amylaze to break down the starches into sugars and then ferment the broth. At any rate, the typical sugar content would be 12%, unless you lose a lot of water in the specific processing you chose, and in that case, the sugar becomes more concentrated, and flavors too, and your wine better. You will always have to add acid blend to make good banana wines.

Here's a guide on how to determine the potential alcohol content from various sugar content of the solution:

http://www.brsquared.org/wine/CalcInfo/HydSugAl.htm

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

Mitchel, I made sherry wine from California Gold. It is turning out to be fantastic sherry wine and the ABV so far has clocked 17% as of the last racking which was 2 nights ago. The only downside is that I have netted only 1 gallon of California Gold Sherry Wine from the original 2 gallons of broth and 15 lbs of California Gold bananas, 10 lbs of which was given by Mike (bananavilla). Will have to find the time to ship him one bottle of the rarest sherry wine in the world! The one gallon makes about 5 bottles.

Will show pics once it is bottled.

Cheers,

Joe

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

Not to be proud or knowledgeable (30 years of wine making experience of various fruits) in wine making, I have read various recipes from people in the tropics about making wine from bananas, one thing I have concluded that their wines are unstable and would turn to vinegar easily if not consumed right away. Beers are consumed right away, but wine needed some time to bring out proper flavor, and for that, the ABV should be biologically stable. Most of the tropical recipes I have read do not reach those required PA for a stable wine.

They (tropical growers wanting to make banana wine) have a long ways to go to understand the sugar, starch, carb, fiber contents, enzymes, acid blends, yeast nutrients, different types of yeasts and how they all relate to making good and stable banana wines.

One thing that I'd like to share and is showing great potential is that bananas make very good sherry wine, much better than the other fruits I've tried.

And of course, I am willing to take the challenge of wine tasting from those supposedly super specialized in this kind of the world only banana cultivar wine versus the banana wine that I make from store-bought very common bananas. Gabe, can you sponsor this event just in case?

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

Joe what do you mean by hydrolyzing the bananas? Does this mean boiling the fruit? Do you mind posting your recipe for your banana sherry ?

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

Yes, just like when you cook rice or potato. I prefer to do it using pressure cooker, some water with weak acid concentration (citric, tartaric or malic).

While you can use the ripe bananas as is, perhaps just mash it through a blender, without cooking, I find that cooking the bananas first in the pressure cooker before adding all the other wine ingredients, bring out the flavor and aroma of bananas much more than without cooking.

But of course your exact wine processing details could vary and you may have results the other way around. But my methods as posted earlier in other threads would necessitate this step in order to get good banana aroma and flavor in the wine.

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

Will prepare the recipe for banana sherry next week after I bottle them. It takes a while to translate them from actual measurements (will gather my notes scribbled all over) into standardized measurements.

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

They sell banana-beer at my local grocery store here in Norway.

I've tried it, and it tastes absolutely horrible. I wouldn't serve it to my worst enemy. It is also ridiculously expensive. Even Bud-light is better. (Sorry, couldn't resist)

Erlend

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

Thanks!

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

Thanks!

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

Erlend,

I don't love beer myself although I can drink them, that is why I make wine and not beer. The only time I would love to drink beer is when working under the hot summer sun in my yard, then an ice-cold beer is heaven sent and I wouldn't any wine at that time. I haven't tasted banana beer though.

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

I suspect the banana beer erlend mentioned is probably normal beer with banana flavoring added - like a cherry wheat.

I agree erlend, budweiser is horrible "beer".

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

Yes, Buttwiper beer as I like to call is quite nasty!

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

Search links expire and not only that, they belong to you as the one who performed the search.
I'm pretty sure you can't share a search link with the rest of the site, it's for privacy issues and whatnot, so folks can't see what other folks are searching for.
However, we can construct an URL to do a search for a keyword, and it will always return a new, fresh search for the term.

See
http://www.bananas.org/search.php?do...&s=&query=wine

You cannot just copy and paste this link, it's shortened (see the three .'s - that means its been truncated) Hold your mouse over it and look in the lower left corner of your browser to see what the full link looks like, or you can also right click the link and select "copy link location" if you use Mozilla or Firefox, or "Copy Shortcut" in Internet Explorer to get it to your clipboard. Then paste it in the address bar and change the word "wine" to whatever you want to search for, and then hit enter to pass the link to the site and start the search.

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

[quote=JoeReal;8400]Beers are consumed right away, but wine needed some time to bring out proper flavor, and for that, the ABV should be biologically stable. QUOTE]


This is not completely true. Most beers are ready in about six weeks after brewing, however some beers do much better with age especially if you bottle condition. When making barley wine, which is just a strong beer, it can take years to condition. If I was going to make a banana beer I would add the banana to the mash. Not sure how much you need to add though to get a banana flavor. Boiling might help with the starch conversion to sugar though. I wouldn't add to the primary fermenter at all, and if you dare to add to the secondary, I would be sure to boil for at least 10 minutes.

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

I had banana beer when i was stationed in japan. It was flavored with a spalsh of citrus. It was ok ice cold. :nanadrink:

Re: Banana wine/beer
 

What a minute here, are you saying I should not be able to view the search link you just provided? FYI, I can see it. I'm not sure what your talking about. Can other people not see the link I provided?