Fruit in the second run?

[muscashine]

A while back I tried making a banana rum. I mixed up the sugar and molasses and bananas, let everything ferment, then did my stripping run. There was a slight banana smell in the heads of the rum (and a REALLY good odor from the worm at first). After the stripping run there was no taste of nanners left, and only a slight smell coming out the worm. Im really looking for a more pronounced nanner flavor in my rum.
I tried soaking some bananas in the finished product - which went REALLY bad. The whole thing turned brown, muddy-looking and gross. I couldn't filter out the nanner bits, they either clogged or went through various filters.

So - what I was thinking, would it be possible to mush up some bananas in some distilled water, stir them real good, and put in the boiler with the low wines? Would that give me a better banana flavor coming off the stripping run? Same thing for other fruits/juices like apple cider or peaches...
Someone suggested it with muscadines, but I only added juice, not grape skins and all, and I really didn't get much muscadine smell out of that one.

[aceswired]

Did you convert the bananas? Keep the peels? Banana rum is on my to do list and from all I've read, including the peels is essential. They're supposedly packed with flavor as well as enzymes for conversion.

I've been tucking away bananas 1-2 at a time when they're too brown to eat. I let them get good and brown. Then I stick um in the oven at 140 for a bit. They get like little liquid-filled skins. Building up a freezer-full of those. Plan to use with some brown sugar.

[muscashine]

I don't know how to convert bananas. Last time I just tried putting them in the food processor and making mush.

[MDH]

Yes, you can do this.

Look up the terms "schnapsbrennen" and "Gheist" in the same search. In Germany it's very common to take a vodka made from grapes, add fresh, mashed fruit to it, then redistill. A good example is "Himbeergeist", which is basically raspberry vodka.

[muscashine]

Hey thanks... I'll have to try this out next. I enjoy making "rums" out of brown sugar. Simple, fast and pretty easy. And the house smells AWESOME while it's fermenting, like someone's making cookies.