Anyone Home Brew beer?

[trbig]

LMAO.. Usually, constructive criticism is taken well by adults, especially by the time they reach your age. Apparently a bad assumption on my part and I apologize.

I could have fit plenty in there and re-wrote that several times so as not to appear sanctimonious, but get you to maybe understand how your staunch defense of something so laughably inferior by the rest of the world's standards (Not just mine) that I thought my comparisons apt. Again, my apologies for assuming an open mind to anything new or different. I could care less if you disagree with me, but was responding to your justifications of why you prefer your beer to homebrew and why these justifcations didn't really apply. You can make homebrew as weak or as strong as you'd like for much cheaper than even your "Cheap azz beer" with exacting results that you'd know every single time what you were getting. Meaning.. if you found something you like, you can reproduce that every time if you're careful and consistent at a much lower cost. But as long as you've convinced yourself, as I said, to each his own. I mean, you tried some guy's homebrew once, so you know what you're talking about, right? You defended what you drink and I defended what I drink. Eat, drink, and be merry with your Skittles, Boone's Farm, and bubbly water since they meet your expectations.

Some are happy with simple things in life. Many are happy with vanilla pudding. Some want Creme Brulee. Some can have conversations like adults without feeling like everything is a personal attack. Some can't, and feel the need to lash out angrily.

[natemoen]

Some can have conversations like adults without feeling like everything is a personal attack. Some can't, and feel the need to lash out angrily.

Yeah Tod! you are such a snooty A-Hole!!!

[trbig]

Yeah Tod! you are such a snooty A-Hole!!!

Yeah, I was going to say that we could talk about it over a cold watery beer in a couple weeks, but then remembered you don't drink.. which made a quote come to mind.

Son, never trust a man who doesn’t drink because he’s probably a self-righteous sort, a man who thinks he knows right from wrong all the time. Some of them are good men, but in the name of goodness, they cause most of the suffering in the world. They’re the judges, the meddlers. And, son, never trust a man who drinks but refuses to get drunk. They’re usually afraid of something deep down inside, either that they’re a coward or a fool or mean and violent. You can’t trust a man who’s afraid of himself. But sometimes, son, you can trust a man who occasionally kneels before a toilet. The chances are that he is learning something about humility and his natural human foolishness, about how to survive himself. It’s damned hard for a man to take himself too seriously when he’s heaving his guts into a dirty toilet bowl.
~James Arthur Crumley (October 12, 1939 – September 17, 2008)

[fredintoon]

Why do I home brew?
Because 3/4 of the price of any store-bought alcoholic beverage goes straight to the Government.
And I pay way too much tax as it is.

[sparkfly88]

My parents are beekeepers and they make all sorts of Mead.

[trbig]

My parents are beekeepers and they make all sorts of Mead.

Hmmm... Any good recipes they'd share? I see several people that make it with oranges. It can get a bit expensive though. This 6 gallon batch used almost 18 pounds of honey. I thought about trying out some different batches and making them just a gallon at a time. The problem is.. is that it takes so long with the mead to know if you have anything worth repeating.

[sparkfly88]

Hmmm... Any good recipes they'd share? I see several people that make it with oranges. It can get a bit expensive though. This 6 gallon batch used almost 18 pounds of honey. I thought about trying out some different batches and making them just a gallon at a time. The problem is.. is that it takes so long with the mead to know if you have anything worth repeating.

I'll ask em, so far my favorites were peach, and just plain meade.

[trbig]

Many I talk to have never even heard of it, but I just made a big batch of BANANA wine recently. All I can say is, WOW! Best batch of anything I've ever done. I've had others try it and they have all really liked it even though they got the screwed up face innitially. "Banana wine!?!? Never heard of it?" Then, "Wow! This stuff could get addicting!" lol. It's at 16-17% alcohol, so it doesn't take much, even though I've now got @ 10 gallons of the stuff. lol Might be good to warm up some of you guys snowed in up north.









Sparkfly, still waiting on my mead to mellow. It started off tasting like rocket fuel at nearly 20% alcohol, but after 8 months or so, it's finally getting a nice honey flavor to it. Might as well start another batch, bottle this up and leave it alone for at least a year or two.

Many gallons of beer made.. some good, some bad. Oh... I also had a really good batch of rice wine come out right before Christmas.







Anyway.. Cheers to you all!

[fredintoon]

Many I talk to have never even heard of it, but I just made a big batch of BANANA wine recently. All I can say is, WOW! Best batch of anything I've ever done. I've had others try it and they have all really liked it even though they got the screwed up face innitially. "Banana wine!?!? Never heard of it?" Then, "Wow! This stuff could get addicting!" lol. It's at 16-17% alcohol, so it doesn't take much, even though I've now got @ 10 gallons of the stuff. lol Might be good to warm up some of you guys snowed in up north.

Hi Tod,
gotta recipe?
I gotta 5 gallon jug and our deepfreeze has a goodly stock of bananas that my wife plans to make into banana bread.
Mebbe it's time I got out of my kit-box Gewurtstraminer rut and tried a new brew.

[trbig]

With just a 5 gallon jug, just keep an eye on it. It's a pretty aggressive ferment and might puke out the top if you let it get too warm. If you've got any homebrewing stores around, they have 7-7 1/2 gallon buckets and that's what I use. I've tried a couple different ways now and I think using this yeast listed, though it'll top out at @ 15% alc, made the best. A lot of people talked of needing to let it age for at least a year before it's drinkable, but I haven't seemed to have that problem. lol. Most are using a champaigne yeast that will take it up to 20% alcohol, but taste like rocket fuel for a long time (Like what's going on with my mead) You might have to leave your wife's bananas alone though since you need the peels as well.

10 lbs. ripe bananas
1 lb. Golden Raisins
10 lbs. sugar (Just regular cane sugar) 10 lbs makes a sweet wine, (Not sickeningly sweet like a Moscato) and 8 pounds sugar is a bit dryer. Depends on how you like it.
1/4 cup each lemon and orange juce
2 cans white grape juice concentrate, thawed
2 1/2 tsp. Acid Blend
2 tsp. Yeast Nutrient
2 tsp. Pectic Enzyme
3 gals filtered water
1 pkg. wine yeast (I chose 71B-1122)


Peel the bananas and add them (The bananas) to the ferment bucket. (Primary) Chop the skins into small pieces. (Remove the Dole stickers..lol) In a pot, boil 1 1/2 gals water, add the skins, bring back to simmer, not boil, then simmer the skins for 30 minutes. This adds flavor, color, and tannins.

While that's simmering, mash up the bananas in the primary, then chop up the raisins. Chopping the raisins is such a PITA, I've decided next time to soak them in warm water for a while to re-constitute a bit first before chopping. Add everything except the yeast, pectin enzyme, and sugar to the primary, then mix well. With your yeast at room temperature, make a yeast starter of 8 oz warm water, 2 Tbsp. of the sugar and a blob of the banana mixture. Mix and aerate well, then add the yeast and mix well again. The yeast starter isn't a necessity, but it's just something I almost always do with my wine making or brewing.

After the skins have simmered 30 minutes, remove pot from heat, and remove the banana skins with a slotted spoon. There'll still be some floaty stuff, but don't worry about it. It all settles out in the ferment. Your water will be a brownish color. Discard skins, then add sugar to hot water and stir until desolved. Add this syrup directly into your primary over your banana mush and mix/aerate well. Add the remaining 1 1/2 gallons of cold water, mix well, and by this point, the temperature is generally low enough to add the yeast, but you can let it sit with a lid on it until room temperature first. You want it down to at least 85-90 degrees F, but lower would be better. When you add the yeast, also add the pectin enzyme. Pectin (Pectic) enzyme is used on most fruit wines to prevent a gelatinous mess. This batch made @ 4 gallons of wort.

After a couple weeks, I syphoned the liquid over into a secondary container, leaving all the particulates and chunks of banana that remained, then put it out in the garage (Cold) which makes it clear up. It was out there @ a month and a half, and I actually siphoned it into a 3rd container to leave the particulates behind that had dropped to the bottom, then put that back out in the garage for a couple days, then bottled it off of that.

You don't have to follow this exact, but there just aren't very many banana wine recipes online. Play with it and make it yours.. let me know how it turns out!

[fredintoon]

With just a 5 gallon jug, just keep an eye on it. It's a pretty aggressive ferment and might puke out the top if you let it get too warm. - - -

Hi Tod,
thanks for the recipe.
I do have a bigger than 5 gallon plastic bucket for the initial ferment and can get the little packages of stuff at my local wine-kit store.
One question though.
Most of my banana stock is in the deepfreeze and when you freeze bananas the skins turn black.
The black skins still OK for the simmer then discard part?
Wait for a year?
Yeah, right.
If it's stopped seething it's good to go, eh?

[James England]

Wasn't the original question "anyone home brew beer?", rather than "anyone NOT home brew beer", Rasputin? I suspect the original post was to find like-minded XSives rather than anything else.....

I used to be a prolific brewer and used dry-ingredient kits. I kept a brewing record and found that 'Amber Export' made by a UK company called Hambleton Bard was absolutely wonderful stuff. I made 2,400 UK pints of it and lost only 80 pints due to it going 'off'. I did a secondary fermentation in 1.25 pint bottles, adding a teaspoon of sugar solution to each screw-capped bottle. This increased the strength and gave it a brilliant 'fizz'. The beer was absolutely clear in the bottles and the trick was to unscrew the cap and immediately pour out one pint only into a glass, before the fizz had time to drag the secondary fermentation sediment up and make the beer cloudy. This meant wasting 0.25 pints per bottle but was worth it to ensure a crystal clear brew.

Sadly, I had to stop drinking alcohol entirely 11 years ago but still pine for the Amber Export. It was possible to drink as much as it took to collapse in an alcoholic stupor but never ever resulted in hangover! Probably why I had to stop.......

[trbig]

Most of my banana stock is in the deepfreeze and when you freeze bananas the skins turn black.
The black skins still OK for the simmer then discard part?

??? No idea? They're pretty close to black after the boil, so who knows? I have no idea how much bananas are up north, but at @ 59 cents a pound here, (And can actually get 10 lbs for a buck of the ones getting spots on them at a local store) it wouldn't be worth the risk of a bad batch personally. I do know that in my search for a recipe for this, it did say not to use over-ripe bananas where the skins were mostly black, but black because of frost may be different?

After a couple weeks of ferment in the primary, it'll still be pretty cloudy. There's several things you can add to clear it up, but I like to add as little as possible when I can. Cold crashing has always done a great job for me, it just might take a bit longer.

[IanDMacDonald]

Todd- Even though I don't drink, I shared your recipes with those whom do, and they're trying this out. Very fun to read. Thanks for the recipes.

[trbig]

Sounds good, Ian. I literally looked for hours and hours online trying to find a recipe for this and I found two and kind of combined them.

Only other thing I recommend would be treat the wine with potassium sorbate or camden tablets to kill the yeast when it gets to the sweetness they like. 1/2 tsp potassium sorbate or 1 camden tablet per gallon.

Either that, or just drink it all before the wine can change? lol.