Banana wine going crazy

[BadBanshee]

I have 2 wines on the go atm, kit bought white grape (1 week in) and banana from scratch (12 hours in), both in demijohns. The banana one doesn't seem to be going as smoothly as the grape one. It keeps bubbling through the airlock which I have cleared a few times last night and once more this morning. I have now left the airlock off completely.

There is also a huge head of foam that builds up which I have tried getting rid of by giving it a good shake. When I do this the whole thing turns into a solution again for a few minutes and interestingly there is less of it after shaking but the foam finds its way to the top again soon enough and the volume of the mixture grows again.

Ingredients used were 10 bananas (didn't have any scales) and approximately 800-900grams of sugar, added water to make 4.5 litres (1 gallon) and 5g wine yeast in sachet.

So I'm thinking there are 2 possible reasons for all this:

1) I pureed the bananas and added them to the mix. Later on when I checked the specific gravity it was off the scale because the mix was so thick! I realized afterwards that I should have probably boiled the bananas to get the juice out and sieve out the pulp. I was considering taking the mixture out of the demijohn and sieving it but then I thought, well I don't see why the yeast can't still work on the sugar with the banana puree in there and maybe it'll add more banana flavours.

2) Once set up I gave the demijohn a good shake every hour or so. Not sure why. Just thought it would help things along. Perhaps that made the fermentation process go into overdrive.

3) I'm reading on this forum to my surprise that using an airlock is not advised on the primary, only on the secondary. Well, I wasn't planning on doing a secondary anyway, just jumping straight to bottling, but the grape one has an airlock and things are running along very smoothly 1 week into the fermentation. The yeast clearly didn't need oxygen unless there was some additive in those sachets to induce oxygenation (it was labelled "nutrifine" obviously a yeast nutrient but does that oxygenate?). Anyway, I left the banana mixture overnight and it still bubbled through the airlock so I've left the airlock off for about 1 hour now and it doesn't seem to be bubbling as aggressively. Isn't bacteria in the air going to contaminate it without an airlock? I thought that was the whole point of an airlock...

Anyway, hoping somebody can shed some light on this. Thanks in advance.

 

[beggarsu]

Hi BB,

Yeah, I read this post as I'm figuring out how to add 3 lbs of bananas to my 6-7 liters of home picked raspberries.

finally i Decided to boil the sliced bananas, maybe some of the sliced peels i will boil separately and test that. Then I will add only the juice to the primary ferment-er.. I might put the raspberry mush and banana mush in pantyhose stuff I got for one dollar at the dollar store. I use it for straining but I'm wondering if prolonged use it might be toxic?

..
Anyway , yes - universally people ferment in a primary with a headspace 8 inches at least or much more and only have a loose lid like in a bucket or just a towel draped on top to keep out dust and insects. This for the first 7 days.
The reason is that the fermenting wine must release CO2. It needs space to do this. Restricting this space to let out the CO2 slows down with the fermentation and probably could stop it There is little danger of oxidization with the air at this stage as the liquid is pushing out CO2 rather vigorously.

You might expect foaming on just about any wine which might vary from wine to wine and on temperature conditions etc . you might expect it and facilitate it - don't work against it.
When the primary fermentation is done, it is transferred to a secondary with an airlock. The purpose of the airlock in keeping out the air is to prevent oxidation - the interaction of which turns the wine into vinegar,

Stirring:
Yeah I stir - I leave a batch alone til there is activity , then on second day - a very cautious stir and so on and so on until stirring very vigorously on 3rd or 4th day. In the beginning, I don't want to disturb the yeast starting but then as it takes root in the whole thing I make sure it gets distributed.

Yeah I would take SG before pulp addition and only add in some kind of bag that won't break. I've given up on trying to figure out recipes - i simply juice to taste and with an eye on a target volume (eg 5 or 6 gallons) adding sugar to a target SG For last batch (crabapple) I went to a higher ABV targeting 15 percent ABV perhaps so I had it at 1.20 SG or more 1.30 (forgot - have to check my notes) . fruit yeast seems to be abbe to handle it.

Lately I got a gob of 1 gallon wine bottles which means with a package of balloons I have any amount of 1 gallon carboys I want which means I no longer have to care if my batch is only 3 or 4 gallons or even 3.5 because I can also use 2 liter pop battles as carboys for overflow stuff. Like right now my home picked raspberries will only be under 3 gallons juice now add bananas juice and sugar it might be 4 gallons tops - that would be a problem if I didn't have a surfeit of 1 gallon jugs for my secondaries after it has done a primary as one batch.

Filtering wine is very difficult without a professional machine - it just doesn't filter otherwise , I don't do It I just let my wines settle and take off the top - no problems so far only last two bottles in a batch are suspect and left to and bottle reracked. You do sound like you have a mess - I wouldn't try to sieve since fermentation is ongoing , I would let settle out naturally over months racking and re-racking - spangloid ?(sp) works very well for clearing fruit wines _ i just used that on rhubarb and only used it now in third month - I think 3 months is enough - I'll bottle very shortly.

Edit:

If you are still in the 7 day primary period , I would recommend transferring the banana wine (lees and mush and all) to an open pail with a loose lid and some headspace. If it wants to foam give it some headspace to let it happen and room to let the CO2 out.

 

[Sammyk]

I add a few sliced bananas to all of my fresh fruit wine. I slice them up before I freeze them and add them to a mesh bag. I either use the same bag as the fresh fruit or sometimes I put the bananas in a separate bag.

For banana wine I used sliced frozen bananas from our freezer (10 pounds) with a box of golden raisins in a mesh bag. No boiling! We have 2 gallons after racking off a 1/2 gallon of lees. There will probably be a bit more lees at the next racking. I did add bentonite the 3rd day of fermentation so it is not likely that they will be a whole lot more at the next racking. I expect to end up with just under 2 gallons of wine.

Not bad for something that would have went in the garbage as we don't eat bananas once the get a lot of brown specks. I let them finish browning then throw them in the freezer.

 

[BernardSmith]

Badbanshee, Hi, I don't know that I see any problem in the fermentation given your description. The problem may be in sealing the"primary". Different fruits will result in very different kinds of activities during the early days of the fermentation. Where there are more solids in the must or where the protein fibers may be longer or more elastic, the action of the yeast and the resulting CO2 may create a great deal of foam. In my opinion you want to begin fermentation in a bucket or at the very least a carboy with a great deal more space than the volume of the wine you are making.

That said, in your post you say that you intend to go from the primary bucket to bottling. Your call, of course, but here's the thing: one of the reasons that people generally rack (siphon) their wine from the primary to the secondary is that after about a week or 10 days (and sometimes it can take months - the length of time is not the issue- the amount of fermentable sugar still left to be fermented IS) is because fermentation will have slowed down, not ended, and slowed down enough for the amount of CO2 being produced not to fully protect the wine from oxidation (oxidation being caused by the contact of the wine with the air). Oxidation is what you are protecting the wine from by sealing the carboy. Bottling too soon means that all the sediment that would have dropped out in your carboy will now end up in the bottle. Not a problem for beer makers but this is often considered a flaw in wine making.

There is really no fear of bacterial contamination Alcohol is not a healthy environment for chance bacteria. It kills them. Yeast create a level of alcohol which reduces the competition for nutrition from other life forms and the CO2 that forms in the early days of fermentation acts as a blanket between the surface of the wine and airborne pollutants. But you seem to have sealed the wine immediately reducing the yeasts' exposure to oxygen. Yeast uses oxygen to reproduce and so it needs O2 (oxygen) during the first days of fermentation - which is why you agitate the mix, you stir or shake your fermenting mixture. After a short while though, you want to prevent the wine having any contact with air because the air can oxidize the wine producing flavors and indeed changing the color in ways that you may not prefer. You have a population of yeast and you want them to get on with the business of focusing not on reproduction but on feasting on the sugars you have provided.

But by sealing the carboy from day 1 you are stressing the yeasts unnecessarily (preventing their access to needed air). Stressed yeast does not result in flavors that are preferred. So, the first few days you make the yeast comfortable and allow them to reproduce by providing them with access to enough air and in the next weeks and months you use the yeast population you have to convert the sugars to alcohol without expending any of their energy in reproduction.

While folk generally refer to primary and secondary fermentation I think that that is a colloquial misnomer. Secondary fermentation really applies to a deliberate (or accidental) inoculation of bacteria that transform malic acids to lactic acids and so temper the flavor of the wines (usually red wines or wines made of fruit with lots of malic aciid (apple wine, for example). When most wine makers use the term primary and secondary fermentation they really mean fermenting in an open bucket and then continuing that fermentation in a sealed carboy with an airlock.

You also mention the possibility of boiling the fruit (your bananas). You boil fruit when making jam. The boiling helps set the fruit by increasing the length (I think) and strength of the fruit proteins but in wine making that is not something you want to do. In fact you want to break down the proteins and that is why you add an enzyme to break the protein chains. You might warm the bananas and water to help dissolve the fruit more easily, but boiling the fruit I think simply creates obstacles to producing a clear wine.

with apologies for the length of this post.

 

[BadBanshee]

Badbanshee, Hi, I don't know that I see any problem in the fermentation given your description. The problem may be in sealing the"primary". Different fruits will result in very different kinds of activities during the early days of the fermentation. Where there are more solids in the must or where the protein fibers may be longer or more elastic, the action of the yeast and the resulting CO2 may create a great deal of foam. In my opinion you want to begin fermentation in a bucket or at the very least a carboy with a great deal more space than the volume of the wine you are making.

That said, in your post you say that you intend to go from the primary bucket to bottling. Your call, of course, but here's the thing: one of the reasons that people generally rack (siphon) their wine from the primary to the secondary is that after about a week or 10 days (and sometimes it can take months - the length of time is not the issue- the amount of fermentable sugar still left to be fermented IS) is because fermentation will have slowed down, not ended, and slowed down enough for the amount of CO2 being produced not to fully protect the wine from oxidation (oxidation being caused by the contact of the wine with the air). Oxidation is what you are protecting the wine from by sealing the carboy. Bottling too soon means that all the sediment that would have dropped out in your carboy will now end up in the bottle. Not a problem for beer makers but this is often considered a flaw in wine making.

There is really no fear of bacterial contamination Alcohol is not a healthy environment for chance bacteria. It kills them. Yeast create a level of alcohol which reduces the competition for nutrition from other life forms and the CO2 that forms in the early days of fermentation acts as a blanket between the surface of the wine and airborne pollutants. But you seem to have sealed the wine immediately reducing the yeasts' exposure to oxygen. Yeast uses oxygen to reproduce and so it needs O2 (oxygen) during the first days of fermentation - which is why you agitate the mix, you stir or shake your fermenting mixture. After a short while though, you want to prevent the wine having any contact with air because the air can oxidize the wine producing flavors and indeed changing the color in ways that you may not prefer. You have a population of yeast and you want them to get on with the business of focusing not on reproduction but on feasting on the sugars you have provided.

But by sealing the carboy from day 1 you are stressing the yeasts unnecessarily (preventing their access to needed air). Stressed yeast does not result in flavors that are preferred. So, the first few days you make the yeast comfortable and allow them to reproduce by providing them with access to enough air and in the next weeks and months you use the yeast population you have to convert the sugars to alcohol without expending any of their energy in reproduction.

While folk generally refer to primary and secondary fermentation I think that that is a colloquial misnomer. Secondary fermentation really applies to a deliberate (or accidental) inoculation of bacteria that transform malic acids to lactic acids and so temper the flavor of the wines (usually red wines or wines made of fruit with lots of malic aciid (apple wine, for example). When most wine makers use the term primary and secondary fermentation they really mean fermenting in an open bucket and then continuing that fermentation in a sealed carboy with an airlock.

You also mention the possibility of boiling the fruit (your bananas). You boil fruit when making jam. The boiling helps set the fruit by increasing the length (I think) and strength of the fruit proteins but in wine making that is not something you want to do. In fact you want to break down the proteins and that is why you add an enzyme to break the protein chains. You might warm the bananas and water to help dissolve the fruit more easily, but boiling the fruit I think simply creates obstacles to producing a clear wine.

with apologies for the length of this post.

In future I will definitely just throw a clean towel over the demijohn until the most violent reactions are over with, which was about a day or 2 with my banana wine.

My original plan was to airlock it as soon as possible, firstly because that's what the instructions that came with my white grape wine kit told me to do for that wine, and secondly because I thought mushed up banana probably doesn't last long when exposed to air (it starts to discolour to a light brown almost immediately). Ofcourse, I'm leaving this to ferment for a few weeks and I know bananas don't last that long, so I figured perhaps the CO2 and then the alcohol will preserve the banana pulp for as long as necessary until fermentation is complete.

As it stands, the banana pulp still looks healthy, although I'm assuming that the top might be riddled with bacteria so I haven't shaken the demijohn any more times. I was thinking of just siphoning the wine underneath the layer of pulp on top in the hope of avoiding any bacteria lying right on top. This is ofcourse just my own musings and I admit that I do love speculating over my "experiments". There's a nice combination of science and art to brewing.

I'll post a picture of how it looks so far. Most people who look at it think it looks disgusting, like there is a floating cleaning sponge inside. Maybe I'm biased but it looks like quite a tasty looking cleaning sponge to me

I see what you're saying about fermentation slowing down rather than stopping. At the moment though, I'm thinking of turning my banana wine into banana champagne and carbonating it. I guess in such case, bottling straight from the primary is better?

With regards to boiling the bananas. I think the recipes that call for boiling the bananas end up discarding the pulp without putting it in the primary. So the reason for boiling would be to extract as much of the sugars and juices from the banana as possible. I wouldn't boil the bananas AND add the pulp to the primary. It's one or the other I think.

 

[BadBanshee]

Hi BB,

Yeah, I read this post as I'm figuring out how to add 3 lbs of bananas to my 6-7 liters of home picked raspberries.

finally i Decided to boil the sliced bananas, maybe some of the sliced peels i will boil separately and test that. Then I will add only the juice to the primary ferment-er.. I might put the raspberry mush and banana mush in pantyhose stuff I got for one dollar at the dollar store. I use it for straining but I'm wondering if prolonged use it might be toxic?

..
Anyway , yes - universally people ferment in a primary with a headspace 8 inches at least or much more and only have a loose lid like in a bucket or just a towel draped on top to keep out dust and insects. This for the first 7 days.
The reason is that the fermenting wine must release CO2. It needs space to do this. Restricting this space to let out the CO2 slows down with the fermentation and probably could stop it There is little danger of oxidization with the air at this stage as the liquid is pushing out CO2 rather vigorously.

You might expect foaming on just about any wine which might vary from wine to wine and on temperature conditions etc . you might expect it and facilitate it - don't work against it.
When the primary fermentation is done, it is transferred to a secondary with an airlock. The purpose of the airlock in keeping out the air is to prevent oxidation - the interaction of which turns the wine into vinegar,

Stirring:
Yeah I stir - I leave a batch alone til there is activity , then on second day - a very cautious stir and so on and so on until stirring very vigorously on 3rd or 4th day. In the beginning, I don't want to disturb the yeast starting but then as it takes root in the whole thing I make sure it gets distributed.

Yeah I would take SG before pulp addition and only add in some kind of bag that won't break. I've given up on trying to figure out recipes - i simply juice to taste and with an eye on a target volume (eg 5 or 6 gallons) adding sugar to a target SG For last batch (crabapple) I went to a higher ABV targeting 15 percent ABV perhaps so I had it at 1.20 SG or more 1.30 (forgot - have to check my notes) . fruit yeast seems to be abbe to handle it.

Lately I got a gob of 1 gallon wine bottles which means with a package of balloons I have any amount of 1 gallon carboys I want which means I no longer have to care if my batch is only 3 or 4 gallons or even 3.5 because I can also use 2 liter pop battles as carboys for overflow stuff. Like right now my home picked raspberries will only be under 3 gallons juice now add bananas juice and sugar it might be 4 gallons tops - that would be a problem if I didn't have a surfeit of 1 gallon jugs for my secondaries after it has done a primary as one batch.

Filtering wine is very difficult without a professional machine - it just doesn't filter otherwise , I don't do It I just let my wines settle and take off the top - no problems so far only last two bottles in a batch are suspect and left to and bottle reracked. You do sound like you have a mess - I wouldn't try to sieve since fermentation is ongoing , I would let settle out naturally over months racking and re-racking - spangloid ?(sp) works very well for clearing fruit wines _ i just used that on rhubarb and only used it now in third month - I think 3 months is enough - I'll bottle very shortly.

Edit:

If you are still in the 7 day primary period , I would recommend transferring the banana wine (lees and mush and all) to an open pail with a loose lid and some headspace. If it wants to foam give it some headspace to let it happen and room to let the CO2 out.

With my first wine demijohn I used a kit and there were many stages that I wondered what the explanation was for doing or adding such and such. Over the course of my banana wine experiment I've been learning why I was instructed to do certain things with the kit. For example, only half filling the demijohn, and then 3 days later topping up with cooled boiled water. But yes, it seems to be a precaution because as you say different fruits will foam up differently and the grape one didn't foam up at all. That's why I was wondering why I didn't just top it up to the top at the start!

The only thing with measuring SG before pulp addition is that the SG won't be entirely accurate? Afterall, the pulp is going to add even more sugar. The SG without the pulp is going to be a bit different than the SG without the pulp but with 100% of the sugar extracted from the pulp (which is impossible to do). I'm not sure just how much the difference would be though, it could be miniscule.

 

[froeschli]

in my kitchen, banana is always a ferocious fermentation. the only thing that came close, ever, was a mango i started recently.
i now know better than to put the banana into a carboy before its time. even then, after the first racking, it will usually bubble and foam all the way up for a day or two. I put the airlock on when it calms down. finally, after the second racking it starts behaving "normally"....

 

[beggarsu]

I thought my raspberry juice was still too strong and I had the SG too high so I added about 3 liters + boiled banana and boiled skins (to make 4 gal wine) - boiled separately to test each - skins have a different kind of flavour more rootier not bitter,I decided i needed more water so I boiled both a second time to get something more than water and actually got a lot more out of both types. I discarded pulp and skins.I trust the boiling method as is used by many as per research.


I also added one cup black tea for tannin and will add pectic enzyme.


Taste test is Ok still good raspberry dominant and I needed to take down the % alcohol - it was potentially 15 percent - lowered to about 13. As I just learned yeast limit is 13 percnet and higher alcohol means needs more fruit for flavour as alcohol at that level numbs the taste in final product -
I'm not ready for high alcohol wines yet - don't know enough. Strange though I'm sure my crabapple is over 15 percnet as I deliberately used a high starting SG. It worked but that was a mistake as I realize now from research that might make the flavour taste weak and you are supposed to need much more juice for higher ABV.
I'll eventually see the result.

..
So I balanced it out (raspberry - banana - 4 gallons in my large primary fermenter) I'm satisfied now satisfied with starting flavour and S.G.
....
I made yeast starter yesterday - it's more than ready in about 6 hours I will start the batch it's the optimum time as the campden 4 caps that i added to purify the starting must will have certainly gone by then.
.
..
So bad banshee let us know the final result.

How long do you intend to age the wine before bottling? I'm going with a 3-4 month rule for all my home grown fruit wines. Because research suggests it's good enough at least for my standard and for my limited resources. Many people in a hurry even just do one month. I once had only Taiwan Rum available for 3 years and after that anything tastes good

 

[BadBanshee]

Well if I decide to turn it into bubbly, then I was thinking of bottling it straight away since the yeast in suspension would be desirable in order to make the wine fizzy.

However, if I choose not to carbonate it then I will rack to a secondary for at least a week as per the instructions that came with the white wine kit.

As for ageing, I'd be worried about my wine going off and turning into vinegar. Need to look into that further. Also, what difference does it make ageing in a carboy vs ageing in bottles? I thought ageing happened in the bottle and that the secondary stage was just go on until all the yeast had dropped out of the solution.

 

[beggarsu]

Well if I decide to turn it into bubbly, then I was thinking of bottling it straight away since the yeast in suspension would be desirable in order to make the wine fizzy.

However, if I choose not to carbonate it then I will rack to a secondary for at least a week as per the instructions that came with the white wine kit.

As for ageing, I'd be worried about my wine going off and turning into vinegar. Need to look into that further. Also, what difference does it make ageing in a carboy vs ageing in bottles? I thought ageing happened in the bottle and that the secondary stage was just go on until all the yeast had dropped out of the solution.

I don't know much about bubbly.

No bulk aging is definitely much different. There are some webpages on this. There is also something else happening chemically - it stil will be fermenting but at an extremely slow rate. The primary fermentation is done there is still something happening very slow that smooths the tastes . Every recipe and discussion I've seen on fruit wines and especially on rhubarb talks about racking and re-racking every month (so lees are still falling out) and waiting some months - some say 3, 4,6, 8, etc
That being said my friend bottling after 1 month and declared it the best home made wine he ever made ... but we are not gourmets here lol.
...
It's probably drinkable after 1 month. I've heard tell 3-4 months is major change and after that it's for the real connoisseurs. I've heard professional companies age up to 18 months before bottling.. and so on and so on.

So I don't think we are looking at something simple here. Maybe the reasons are not simply explained but the practice is with everybody.
I was aghast it is longer than 1 month after doing 2 kits but I relented after I realized it's standard. I am going for 3-4 months min with all my fruit wines before bottling - though I might try soem short times.

I suppose if you make a lot of it you can do test batches , 1 month versus 3 etc and compare.

Oh and the other bad news is then people wait more months before drinking. but then avian other people say it doesn't last long enough to bother bottling lol.
But more practically I drink a few bottles of any batch rather immediately then have enough of it left over to have various ongoing wait times.

Yes, I have been worried about turning to vinegar - that's why I'm calling it finished betwen 3-4 months - t but my first two bathes of rhubarb are now at 3 + months and they are ok - the carboy system is working _ one has airlock, the other has a simple balloon for airlock . I now keep them at lower temps than the 20-25 C ferment rate - much lower but this is the one thing I am not sure of.

I'm keeping my crabapple at about 20 C for the first 6 weeks, Still not sure of what temps to use over 3 months.

 

[beggarsu]

Well only Day One not even ended and my raspberry banana 4 gal must is foaming like nothing I've ever seen before .. and it's only got juice of 3 lbs of banana in it in... double boiled skins + banana to make about 3 liters of banana water. About 6 inches + foam in the primary.

Oh yeah lesson is there - banana foams!

 

[BadBanshee]

Well only Day One not even ended and my raspberry banana 4 gal must is foaming like nothing I've ever seen before .. and it's only got juice of 3 lbs of banana in it in... double boiled skins + banana to make about 3 liters of banana water. About 6 inches + foam in the primary.

Oh yeah lesson is there - banana foams!

Wow and that's not even with banana pulp in there?

My banana wine 'as moved to the bottling process. I thought the original plan was to only bottle the champagne 'alf and leave the other 'alf in a secondary to age, but somewhere along the lines there was a communication breakdown between me, and me, and so I bottled the lot

 

[beggarsu]

Wow and that's not even with banana pulp in there?

My banana wine 'as moved to the bottling process. I thought the original plan was to only bottle the champagne 'alf and leave the other 'alf in a secondary to age, but somewhere along the lines there was a communication breakdown between me, and me, and so I bottled the lot

Yeah no pulp -and that was only 3 bounds bananas I saw on special - though I boiled twice because I needed to add something to dilute the raspberry - was to strong to my taste and I had I had the SG up too high ( - boiled the pulp and the peels twice and separately and on the second time got a lot more stuff it's now in 4 x (one gallon wine jugs) with balloons as airlocks.

Yes , you were right - after 14 days , it's just bulk aging. It's a matter of personal taste how long to do that. For now I'm going with 2-4 months max.

So did you taste it yet? Any conclusion?

 

[BadBanshee]

I was really quite unorthodox to be honest. With so much pulp absorbing so much of the wine I had no choice but to give in to temptation and actually sieve the whole lot, rather than siphon it.

I started siphoning but then got down about 2/3 of the way and started sucking up pulp so it really wasn't a choice.

No doubt there's a healthy amount of yeast in there too now.

Me, my sister and her bf all tried it and thought it was highly alcoholic yet wonderful. It was just how I imagined it to be, very light and clean tasting, I would imagine a banana squash would taste like. It had been left in primary for 2 and a half weeks yet was still nice and sweet. My sister described it as a banana liquor. It's definitely got the same refreshing quality but isn't as strong. I thought to myself I could drink tons of this stuff on a hot summer's day!

I'll upload pics and maybe a video if my phone decides to let me.