Banana Saison

[braziliain]

Our latest Homebrew Club challenge here in York is to brew a fruit beer and I'm thinking of attempting a Banana Saison.

I'm wondering who has brewed with bananas before please and at what point/how you added them to the process?

My initial thoughts were that for a 12L batch I would chop and freeze 1kg of ripe bananas, then thaw, mash in the secondary and Syphon my beer on top for a week after initial fermentation is complete.

Anybody had good or bad experience with bananas?

Thanks in advance

 

[Clint]

Worst experience with bananas...not brewing related...I used to run a fruit and veg dept in a supermarket many years ago,selling lots of bananas...found one of those giant spiders on many occasions....plus lizards,locusts,huge ants and other bugs ,spiders were the worst to find...

 

[braziliain]

Worst experience with bananas...not brewing related...I used to run a fruit and veg dept in a supermarket many years ago,selling lots of bananas...found one of those giant spiders on many occasions....plus lizards,locusts,huge ants and other bugs ,spiders were the worst to find...

I can relate to that Clint! I too worked in a supermarket fruit and veg department and a colleague of mine found the skin of a scorpion in a box of Fifes. He thought it was cool so picked it out of the box and put it on our shelf in the packing room. As soon as he put it down it scuttled off! It wasn't a skin but was alive and the cold had made it sleepy! We ended up (carefully) catching it in a Tupperware and donating it to a local reptile zoo.

 

[Hoddy]

TBH i havent ever truly tried "fruit" in a beer. I think the closest i have ever done is grapefruit. But nowadays i dont think that counts as tricky.

 

[Cwrw666]

Not much point in adding bananas to a saison as that's all a saison tastes of anyway.

 

[braziliain]

Not much point in adding bananas to a saison as that's all a saison tastes of anyway.

I must be doing something wrong then as my recent Saisons didn't...

 

[MickDundee]

I must be doing something wrong then as my recent Saisons didn't...

I get lemon, pepper and a bit of spice from the only one I’ve ever brewed.

 

[AdeDunn]

I've never had a single Saison come out tasting of banana either.... You sure you didn't accidentally use a German wheat beer yeast or something? lol

 

[Llamaman]

My adventures with banana beer...
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/worst-brewing-mistake.76626/page-2#post-749943

 

[stz]

Brewed twice with banana. Both times kind of knew that the yeast view them as a lot of sugar. Both times brewed high gravity high temperature beers which threw a bunch of fusel alcohols. Ended up with boozy, thick heady ester bombs with a hint of banana way back in the distance which the briefest of conditioning time removed. The banana flavour is very fragile and degrades very quickly. I used an aseptic freeze dried banana powder. I made banana wine once, it tasted like rocket fuel.

 

[Cwrw666]

I've never had a single Saison come out tasting of banana either.... You sure you didn't accidentally use a German wheat beer yeast or something? lol

Did a French saison a couple of times with the appropriate yeast. Bananas and clove overtones.
Repeated it with a belgian saison yeast. Same.
One of the French ones I used some smoked malt in the mix. Yup, smoked bananas...

 

[AdeDunn]

Did a French saison a couple of times with the appropriate yeast. Bananas and clove overtones.
Repeated it with a belgian saison yeast. Same.
One of the French ones I used some smoked malt in the mix. Yup, smoked bananas...

There's seriously something not right there bud. I've not used the liquid yeasts myself, but I can say that the dried yeasts never gave ANY banana at all. Having done some Googling however, it seems that fermenting high can produce some banana flavours, especially early on. I usually pitch at 19 degrees C, then allow it to free rise over about 3 days to 24 degrees C, then hike it up gradually to max out at 26 to 27 degrees C to finish off. Apparently starting off at a high temp stresses the yeast, and it produces banana esters. Under-pitching will apparently have the same effect.

As to the original question, I'd be tempted to use it in secondary to try to avoid the rocket fuel problem perhaps, and make sure you have temperature control too maybe? lol To be honest, if I want beer that tastes of banana, I'd just make a German wheat beer though, tons of banana flavour, no bananas harmed in the process.... lol

 

[braziliain]

My adventures with banana beer...
https://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/threads/worst-brewing-mistake.76626/page-2#post-749943

Brilliant. Laughed out loud reading that!