banana/honey ferment

[squigglefunk]

I got about 120 lbs of bananas about 3 weeks ago, I let them sit in the box until really ripe... some had gone too far but most were perfect. I like the skin to be full of big brown spots and nice and soft and thin. As they ripen the fruit is converting into sugars. Peeled them and threw the fruit into a 55 gallon fermenter. Added about 10 gallons of boiling water and smushed/stirrer the mix periodically for about 2 hrs. I dont use the peels as I have seen some mention, I might feed some to the goats.

While this was going on I was warming 12 lbs of honey in a hot water bath until runny. I dumped that into the must (is that what we call it?) and rinsed the gallon container out three times with hot water and added that in. Stirrer/smushed for another hr or so and the bananas were pretty much completely broken up at this point.

I took 1118 yeast and rehydrated then fed it a mix of the banana must and a bit of sugar until I had two quart mason jars bubbling away with yeast, I then added that to the fermenter after topping off with cold water until it was about 80ish degrees. I put in a light dose of nutrients and stirred vigorously. Ended up with about 25-30 gallons of must. No way to get a gravity reading as it was too thick/chunky. Man does it smell and taste heavenly. I am excited to see what this one tastes like off the still. Banana is one of my favorites and the honey just complimented it perfectly.