Banana Sherry

[Dend78]

well shes sitting in my carboy still awaiting the flor yeast to get here, hopefully tomorrow

 

[Dend78]

woot woot got my flor sherry yeast today just tossed it into my carboy now i will update this again in a year or so lol

 

[Dend78]

well i need to recheck but i dont think the flor yeast has taken off, which worries me because i am starting to think my abv is up over 16% so the flor yeast wont be able to do anything.

SG was 1.060 when i transferred to secondary which should have been plenty to get it started and let it go until it hit around 1.030ish

 

[Dend78]

yeah this stuff was going nowhere, so i went ahead and added the brandy to the mix, still sitting at 1.060, i have played with the temp, added nutrient nothing no film on top nothing happening at all, so I added the brandy to it along with some water to make up some of the wine that was lost due to 3" of sediment in primary. so now its just sitting in the carboy, bunghole is open with a towel over it. I will be racking it pretty soon to clear out some more lee's

 

[Dend78]

well picked up this carboy the other day and wow crystal clear, took a sample, and figured out something special i need to make about 3 gallons of banana wine to blend with. the banana flavor is there and its great....but the brandy flavoring is overpowering and needs to be thinned out some more. so im thinking if i make up another 3-4 gallons and split this batch it should smooth out the brandy and keep the banana flavoring. so once i get some stuff in bottles i will carry on with this.

 

[saramc]

Crystal clear and gorgeous. A beautiful sight in the carboy, liquid gold, literally.
Alright, by the time I added all my fermentables the adjusted OG was 1.122, used D47. The FG is 0.998 for ACV 16.5%. So very smooth up front, mild kiss of heat on the back of throat, age will do it good. I have been cold soaking bananas in equal parts brandy and pure grain since 10/1/12, have changed bananas four times now and the fortifying liquor is now banana free. Just need to redo my Pearsons Square to confirm amount to add and then will start bulk aging. Backsweetening, if any, will not be done until September at the earliest. This is going to be fabulous, because I like it right now!!

Here is photo taken tonight....

Sara

 

[Dend78]

Sara that looks very good, I hope mine turns out as good as yours does, when I make this 3-4 gallon batch im going to try to step the sugar this time around instead of all at once. hopefully I can run the ec-1118 to its upper limits and then smooth out what I have now in a blend.

 

[Dend78]

Back to the primary again, I started another batch of banana wine last night I ran the water up to about 4gal or just over, i remember the sediment being super impressive like nearly 4" deep on my first batch and I was going to go with 3 gal so i figure it will even out about right at the end. I will keep this updated as time goes on.

 

[Dend78]

well my new batch is chugging along, i was up around 1.092ish for starting sg, im now down to 1.075ish...i say ish because with the pieces of banana and golden raisins floating around in there hydrometer reading can be a bit tricky

1-14-13

well the new wine is fermenting but its going slow i need to check temp but im at about 1.060 right now which is a slow ferment but i had issues with the last batch stalling out as well.

 

[Dend78]

transferred the new batch over to carboy I was going to step it up more but I chose not to, ABV will be plenty high once i blend it into the other batch i have sitting there ready to go

 

[Dend78]

okay well update on this, still hasnt cleared since i blended the batches, ive used insinglass, pectic enzyme, bentonite and as of last night I added in superkleer so we shall see what happens. its been racked and degassed a few times with no luck.

 

[Downwards]

Were the bananas new or not really black? They may have starch in there, amylase will clear it if so.

 

[Dend78]

they were still pretty fresh, just starting to spot

 

[Dend78]

well took a peak last night and wow superkleer FTW!!! amazing difference in just 3 days