Banana Bitter

[will]

I've just gotten myself a Geordie Bitter kit with the intention of creating a brew similar to Well's Banana Bread Beer as an experiment. I was thinking that I could mash down some banana's in a stock pot and boil up with sugar (or spray malt) and water and pour in to the FV during the primary fermentation.

What are people's feelings on this? Any advice or pointers?

[will]

*bump*

I've Googled around, read some books and not really found much info on this, the only facts I've come across are:

• - Some Bavarian wheat beer yeasts produce a banana flavour (an ester) without having banana in them, such as Hoegaarden
  - Bananas are around 23% sugar when fully ripe - around 15g for a medium sized one
  - Bananas contain pectin

So, with this in mind I'm planning on taking around five over-ripe, medium to large bananas, freezing them over night (this should break down their cells), de-thawing, mashing up in a stock pot along with 425g of spray malt and water to fill, boiling, then adding to the FV along with the Geordie Bitter kit and 500g of good sugar or honey, 5 tsps of Pectolase and finally topping up with water before pitching the yeast.

I'm planning on doing this pretty soon, so I'll report back to you all with the results

[mshergold]

Hi. CJJ Berry has recipes for banana wines in his '120 New Winemaking Recipes'. I don't know if you could kind of use quantities of something from there.

[will]

So I ended up giving this a bash. Here are the ingredients I used:

Geordie Bitter kit (including yeast)
500g bananas (peeled)
500g Lidl's Summer Blossom Honey
400g Spray malt
125g Unrefined granulated sugar
3tsps Pectolase

I placed the peeled, chopped bananas in a stock pot with the spray malt, sugar and around 4 litres of water and whilst bringing to the boil, whizzed it up with a hand bender until the banana dissolved completely. Once it had boiled for 20 or so minutes, I took it off the heat and added the honey. Then made up the kit in the usual way with this mixture replacing the usual kettle water, then adding the Pectolase to the wort before pitching the yeast.

I approximated the sugar content by knowing the kit requires 1KG and the bananas are around 20% sugar and the honey around 75%. So the total sugar should roughly be right.

The SG came in at 1.044 temperature corrected.

I did consider a dry hop with some Fuggles, but I don't think it would be worthwhile.

I'll let you know how this comes out in a month or so's time!

[sparky Paul]

I think this has been discussed before, the main worry was a pectin haze from the fruit. If you just scald the banana, rather than boil it, this is less likely IIRC.

It would be great to hear how you get on with with this, OH loves Well's Banana Bread!

[adm]

I dunno.....


I had a bottle of that the other day and I could not get my head around it.

Banana bread - big thumbs up!
Beer - big thumbs up!

Banana bread beer........not to my taste. At all.

I had to bin half of it. Thought it was rank.

Mind you, if the missus likes it, you're onto a good thing.

[will]

I think this has been discussed before, the main worry was a pectin haze from the fruit. If you just scald the banana, rather than boil it, this is less likely IIRC.

It wasn't the most vigorous of boils to be fair and hopefully the Pectolase will take care of some of the pectin, although I should have used another 2 tsps if I was following as directed on the pack. I won't be using finings (due to being veggie), so we can expect it won't be the clearest of pints anyway

My main concern with the Well's Banana Bread Beer is that it wasn't banana-y enough for me - I felt it sort of teased you with a flavour it doesn't really deliver. So I'm hoping my 500g of bananas will really make themselves noticed.

Are there any top fermenting ale yeasts that produce a banana ester that would be suitable to using the future? Should I consider the recipe worth pursuing!

[will]

I've just kegged this. The banana flavour? Totally gone... When it was fermenting the banana smell was overpowering, now it's non-existent. I can't imagine that this will re-emerge during the secondary.

Anyone got any idea what's going on?

[will]

I had a cheeky sample of this out of the barrel yesterday. Hardly detect any banana, but it was seriously smooth. Better body then any kit I've done before. I don't know if that's the bananas doing that or not, but it was delicious!

[PMH0810]

Can't answer why no banana taste but thank you for keeping this updated; it's fascinating (and very tempting)...