Banana Wine--How ripe?

[Mazaruni]

HI there,

I might make some banana wine using Jack Kellar's recipe:
http://winemaking.jackkeller.net/request177.asp

I might use the wine to add body to other fruit wines, but if like the taste, I might use an F-pac with some Reisling juice and make it a full-on drinking wine. I have two questions about banana wine.

1) How ripe should the bananas be? I posted a picture below with some examples of ripeness.

2) In this recipe, the peels are separated from the bananas, so you can have different levels of ripeness for the two. How ripe should the peels be?



Thank you as always for the great advice!

 

[dralarms]

I use anything between the Ones on each end

 

[Mazaruni]

Well, you're just making this too easy!

 

[dralarms]

Well, you're just making this too easy!

And don’t use the peels. They will make your wine bitter.

 

[BernardSmith]

So here's the thing: the blacker the banana the more sugar is in the fruit and the less tannin in the peel . The more yellow (or green) the less sugar in the fruit and the more tannin in the peel - so if you ferment unripe bananas, dralarms point about not adding too much peel is very important but if your peels are soft and black (I freeze any banana I am going to ferment) then adding the peels is not (in my opinion) a problem.

 

[dralarms]

Other than the pesticides

 

[BernardSmith]

That is a great point.. and my answer is that I am pretty certain pesticides don't stop at the peel of bananas.. or the skin of any other fruit... So the secret is to buy organic...

 

[dralarms]

That is a great point.. and my answer is that I am pretty certain pesticides don't stop at the peel of bananas.. or the skin of any other fruit... So the secret is to buy organic...

Ok, I still don’t use them. But I do see your point.

 

[Rice_Guy]

, dralarms point about not adding too much peel

I might use the wine to add body to other fruit wines, but if like the taste, I might use an F-pac with some Reisling juice and make it a full-on drinking wine. I have two questions about banana wine.!

A related question, if using to add body how much per gallon? (I have been toying with putting banana water in a sumach wine)

 

[Coolguy]

In my first batch i used yellow banana(first on the right)
but came out dry...and no flavor...
my second batch is on the way.. i used RED BANANA ripped mix of first four from the right ...
Primary is going great and color sounds good...
I followed the recipe from this video link...

so which one you finally used in your batch?