My Banana Wine Adventure

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Gigglyanya

Junior
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Jul 24, 2021
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Location
PEI, Canada
I'm finally marking off Banana Wine off of my bucket list! I always wanted to try it but have always been daunted by it since it is a long process. Longer then any other wine I've made.

However, Walmart had bagged up bananas that were starting to be too ripe to sell but perfect for wine. 25lbs of bananas for 5 bucks! I took it as a sign it was time to attempt Banana Wine.

Went home and cut up the bananas and simmered them on the stove with 2 gallons of water and 8lbs of sugar. 20210823_174928.jpg

Strained into my fermentation bucket, throwing in a few scoops of the banana mash. Along with raisins, acid blend, tannins, yeast nutrient, yeast Energizer and pectic enzyme. Simmered another 2 gallons of water and 8lbs of sugar, adding to bucket. I let it cool overnight and pitched the yeast in the morning. It looked nasty lol.
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Stirred it the next day, there was a good sized foamy cap on top. When I finished stirring it almost foamed over! The next day I stirred again and once again it had a foam cap and nearly foamed over. I covered the fermention bucket and 15 minutes later it blew the top off the air lock!

Realizing my bucket couldn't contain this energetic wine must, I decided to transfer into a carboy I rarely use because it is often too big for my recipes. It is, however, perfect as a primary for wines that are too energetic for my bucket lol.

Strained the wine must completely and transferred into the carboy. The recipe I'm following, the writer stated they put the fruit through a juicer and added to the must when they transferred to the carboy so I did a bit too. Added another gallon of water to reach the 5 gallons the recipe called for. Popped on airlock and set it in the coolest spot in my house. One hour later I checked and it is bubbling away happily.
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Since I had to transfer to a carboy 2 weeks earlier then I expected, I have no idea how this is going to go now. The recipe I'm using is now essentially useless as this wine has a mind of it's own lol! I will update this post as things go along as a type of progress diary. I hope it will help someone who decides to try the adventure that is banana wine.
One plus to this is my wine area smells like warm banana bread lol
 
First wine I ever made was a banana wine back in 2015. Followed a recipe I found on homebrewtalk, scaled it up to 5 gallons. It was an ugly mess while fermenting but cleared up very nice in secondary and “trimary” to a beautiful yellow. Still have some of it, an explosion of banana flavor/aroma.
 
I've made it a time or so, long, messy, and trublesome, for my brother, but recently www.colomafrozen.com has started selling banana concentrate, in the past everything pretty much i made has been from scratch , but due to health, i have finnaly went to concentrates.
Dawg

Sidebar question, hounddawg, but in your opinion, how did the concentrate compare flavorwise with using the fruit?
 
Sidebar question, hounddawg, but in your opinion, how did the concentrate compare flavorwise with using the fruit?
i'm still neck deep in wines bulk aging, and have 4 gallon pear concentrate in freezer, and a few gallons more of peach consentrate so at best i'm mid-year before i can even think about banana concentrate, ... i just noticed the new concentrate here while back, i wish i knew, but i'll get there in time, just threw that out there in case anyone cared. probally be march or april before i order banana, shoot i still have 1# 6-gal of banana from scratch in bulk, back when i bought them extra 11# 6-gallon carboys, well to be honest i more than even over welmed myself,,
so far i have been pleased with that company,,
Dawg
 
Omg this Banana Wine is awesome!

So I transferred into another carboy once the yeast seemed to have died down. Filtered using a fine mesh bag to catch anything that hadn't broken down. Very little in the filter.

Set it aside for a week to make sure yeast was done. Stabilized and degassed then pitched in my clarifier.
Honestly forgot about it sitting in the back of our cold storage. 2 1/2 months later it is beautiful and clear. Bottled up. Got 16 bottles and a 1 litre jar for the bottom dredges (I ran out of bottles lol). I'll let the jar resettle and bottle it later. Unless someone gets into it lol

Completely drinkable now but definitely going to let it age a bit so it mellows. Currently packs a wallop. My readings were hard through the process due to how ....thick....with particles it was at the start. My yeast only went to 18% so I suspect that is what it topped out at. However, I'm sure if I had used stronger tolerance yeast it could have easily gone higher.

I'm excited to do another batch but it will have to wait til I move. I'm including pictures to show the results.20211119_045832.jpg20211119_045827.jpg20211119_045853.jpg
 
I forgot to mention I have another 1gallon jug of it too. I had tested a different clarifying method on it. So all together I should have a total of 22 to 23 bottles from my recipe that I made for $10 total lol not a bad outcome!
 
I've never seen banana wine in any store. Congrats on how it turned out. Enjoy!
 
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