Recipe For Dry Banana Wine by Andrea Fuhrmann
Since so many people were asking for banana wine and I had none with me I decided to write the full recipe and email it to you so you can add it to the website. It is very detailed and it does not use a fermentation stopper.
Ingredients
- 12 to 14 yellow (not too ripe) bananas
- 250 g sultanas
- 1000 to 1200g granulated sugar (aim for a Specific Gravity of 1100)
- 1 teaspoon acid blend
- 1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
- 1 teaspoon pectolase
- water
- 1 package wine yeast
- ¼ teaspoon tannin
Recipe
- Pour boiling water over the sultanas and chop them roughly
- Place sultanas into clean primary fermentation bucket together with 1000g of the sugar
- Peel and slice bananas
- Chop them into slices. Make sure you remove the dark spots.
- Place in a large saucepan with 1.5 litres water.
- Bring to boil and simmer for 30 minutes.
- Then pour the mash through a fine straining bag into the primary fermentation container.
- Stir to dissolve the sugar. Make up to 1 gallon (5 litres) with cold water.
- Once the mixture has cooled down to 25 degrees add yeast nutrient, tannin, pectolase and acid blend.
- Take a Specific Gravity reading. If the mixture is below 1100 add another 200 g of sugar.
- Add the yeast according to package instructions. Some yeasts need to be hydrated, some not stirred, others stirred after 15 minutes etc.
- Close the bucket and add airlock filled half with water.
- The fermentation should start within 24 hours and can be with heavy foaming and smell.
- Make sure you stir daily with sterilised spoon.
- Wait until it quiets down (about 7 days) then remove the raisins with a tea sieve or sterilized plastic spoon. Stop stirring.
- Siphon the liquid next day into clean demijohn.
- Measure the Specific Gravity and write it down. It should be below 1000.
- Fit and airlock half filled with water.
- Please the demijohn into a cooler, dark environment. You can wrap a towel around the demijohn to keep light out if needed.
- About 4 weeks after the start all fermentation should be finished and you see the wine clearing. There will be a fair amount of sediment at the bottom. Time to do another siphon.
- Take another Specific Gravity reading. It should be about 990. This is as low as it gets.
- Leave the wine in a cool dark place for another 3 month.
- Siphon again into clean container. Then carefully shake the demijohn about 8 times over a period of 2 days (with the airlock removed but the
rubber still fitted). This will remove remaining gas from the wine. - Once all gas is removed siphon the wine into bottles. Keep bottles upright for 2 days, then store them horizontally in a cool dark place.
Enjoy cold or room temperature 🙂
Notes:
If you want your banana wine to taste like banana it is important to use very ripe, almost black bananas and about 15 16. If you don’t like banana taste go with less ripe bananas and no more than 14 medium sized bananas.
Expect the original liquid in all cases to be very ugly (grey), unpleasant looking and smelling. This will pass and give way to a golden wine that can have around 16 to 18 % of alcohol.