Well, I guess it's inevitable: trying a banana wine. This is based on details from a lot of different places around the web.

Since Xenia and I are watching Arrested Development lately, we're calling this Mr. Bananagrabber, a reference to a recurring joke early in the series's first season.

Ingredients

  • 7 lbs., 1 oz. bananas (pre-peeling weight: almost exactly 5 lbs. of banana flesh).
  • 2 lbs. light brown sugar.
  • tap water to just shy of two gallons.
  • 1 packet Lalvin EC-1118 champagne yeast, rehydrated in ½ c. tap water at 100℉.
  • 2 lb. Georgia wildflower honey from Georgia Honey Farm, added on 4 June 2020.

Procedure

Mixed bananas with 2 t;qt. water and mashed in kettle on stove, with heat set to medium. Not sufficiently mashed, so I poured bananas and water into food processor in several batches, pureeing until it was an even thick mixture. Mashed on stove at 160℉ for 20 minutes, then for one hour at 140℉; several sources swear that mashing the bananas leads to starch conversion. I did not conduct an iodine test to verify.

Mixed in the brown sugar and topped off the 2-gallon bucket to nearly two gallons. Rehydrated yeast at 100℉ for fifteen minutes, then pitched, popped a lid on the bucket, and fitted an airlock. Did not measure gravity: thick mash made a reading impossible, anyway.

Brew day: 17 May 2020
Original gravity: Not measured
Bottling day : 12 November 2020
Final gravity: 1.025
Estimated ABV: Unknown! Initial gravity was impossible to measure.

Yield:

  • 8 x 22 oz. beer bottles.
  • ~5 oz. hydrometer tube.

Total yield: Approx. 173 fl. oz., or just over one and a third gallons.

Observations

  • 2020-06-04T14:00: Added two pounds of Georgia wildflower honey to the bucket. Fermentation started again right away.
  • 2020-11-12: Bottled.