A facebook friend of mine recently lamented if there were a way to conserve bananas, make them keep longer. They seem to blacken quickly, even if refrigerated. Most people will say make banana bread with them. I threw out the idea of yeast – if it has alcohol and tastes good, people will drink it. Local liquor store has no banana cider, beer, mead. I could mash bananas with some high enzyme base malt then ferment into something that alcohol will preserve. Any ideas or tries here? Some people don’t like fruit in their beers. I couldn’t make a good pumpkin beer, but have had luck with limes and jalapenos. I think bananas should be my next experiment.
There is plenty of yeast that can give ya that flavor try a good hefe weizen beer or brew with hefe weizen yeast. Will give you that bananna flavor if fermented at right temp.
My wife peels them, puts them in an air tight container, and sets them in the freezer. I don’t know how they taste after coming out of the freezer since they’re always used to make banana bread. But the bread always tastes good.
There was a post a couple years ago, either here or on the HBT forum. Basically a bunch of people decided to see if they could make a drinkable beer using nothing but grocery store ingredients. One guy posted that banana skins have amylase in them and used them to convert something like grapenuts cereal. Sounded gross, but weirdly fascinating.
I am a member of a local “beers of the month” club. Typically get a bomber or 4 new beers each month. A few months ago there was a “banana bread” beer in the line up.
It sat in my fridge until yesterday and I decided to try it. It was not as bad as I thought it would be; interesting and definitely tasted like bananas. But about half way though it, I decided that while I love bananas in my cheerios, I do not like it in my beer; so I poured it out.
So firstly, get your banana’s out of the fridge that actually accelerates the decomposition and makes them blacken faster, as in a day and they’re done. freezing them makes the peel blacken immediately, but preserves the actual fruit but it looses flavor and when it thaws its mushy. Sure you can make beer from them. But alternatively and more simply, do what you do to keep apples from browning, add acid.
Put a few drops of lemon into a piece of plastic wrap and wrap it around the top of the stems…thats it. You’ll get almost an extra week out of them.
I have made both banana wine and mead with leftover/too ripe 'nanners. Having changed computers, I don’t remember exactly the recipe, but do recall about 50% of nanna volume should include the skins. Honey/sugar to appropriate OG. Got some positive feedback on it.
Also…I tended to make 1-2 gal batches, then combined to secondary/3rdary in a 5 gal carboy. It seems that brown sugar was utilized with the wine.
I used to make banana sherbet from my old bananas. Bananas in a blender with a bit of vodka to keep it from freezing too much. Throw some other fruits in there that are going and you have a medley.
