Banana Beer Experiment

[Wirdart]

Woohooo! Finally got myself a couple of cornies and have kicked off a lager brew.

As the cornies hold 4 gallons, I figured I would experiment with the remaining gallon. So, I sliced and mashed a few bananas and added some boiling water to sterilise them (cheers for the tip in another thread Daab). They are now sitting in a demijohn, under airlock with the 'spare' gallon of lager. Will report on the final brew once it has matured! Should be intersting.

[PieOPah]

I remember trying to make a banana beer. This was when I first started brewing beer and the result was horrendous.

I took about 5 litres of water and mashed a forgotten quantity of bananas into it (4 or 5 iirc). I then added this to the kit. I expected the banana to settle out. But it didn't.... It floated and made the beer totally undrinkable. It tasted foul and I ended up throwing it ALL away.

My first mistake was mashing up the banana....

Hopefully you will have much better results than I did!

[Wirdart]

Ah........ Um...... nevermind, live and learn I suppose
Guess I should have posted this before ploughing ahead! The inspiration was from a trip to the Eden project. They are selling bottles of banana bread beer and it is awesome! Its been a few days so I may check the demijohn now. Wish me luck

[PieOPah]

Since you have also mashed some banana, my advice would be to attempt to filter it out when racking to a bottling bucket. This will likely be quite difficult to do without splashing and getting o2 into the beer.

You just don't want those floaty bits in there

[sparky Paul]

I'd like to have a crack at something like that, OH loves Wells Banana Bread!

From the limited info I've read, you have to carefully pasteurise the bananas at around 70-80 degees - anywhere near boiling releases loads of pectin from the fruit and you're in cloudy haze city...

[Wirdart]

The Wells Banana bread beer is good, its what got me experimenting.

I probably am in for a lot of haze then, as I just bolied the kettle and poured it over the mashed banana . If it works out to be in any way drinkable, I will try again, but will pasteurise them instead!

I have been keeping an eye on its progress over the last few days. Quite cloudy and a layer of banana floating on the top, held up by the CO2. The untouched 4 gallon lager batch finished fermenting ages ago, but this lot is still going..... no clue as to what the ABV will be

Hey POP, do you think finings would help at all? It does look like I will be able to siphon from under the layer of banana, avoiding the splshing and aeration from filtering. What you think?

[mst3k]

Hi there,

I have often thought about brewing some of that innocents drink you find in supermarket chillers, they are always banging on about how there is only fruit in them!

How would I go about brewing them? what yeast? how much water per carton? how long?etc, etc

Any thoughts? or is it more of a wine thing?

Thanks

[retourrbx]

I would say more of a wine thing, ive considered doing a wine out of them...