75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

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Copperpot85
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75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by Copperpot85 »

I friend of mine gave me 75 pounds of bannanas that he had left on his delivery that the didn't get unloaded. So I picked them up. I ferment in a 55 gallon drum with air lock. I was think all the bannanas and 30 to 40 pounds sugar and yeast. Don't know what to add as a nuetrient though.( Household wise) and adding 45 gallons of water. I will be running in a copper pot still 25 gal. Also any one who has ran this before. Does it ferment quickly or clear quickly. Thanks for any help you guys always come through for my questions.
junkyard dawg
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by junkyard dawg »

I'll try to describe the absolute foolproof and awesome banana recipe. It is so easy and requires no additional nutrients.

First you Set up your flour paste. In this case a good flaky pastry recipe is best. Roll it out like a big flat gasket and cut it into big rounds. Pie pans are cheap and sturdy for holding the flour paste gasket...

Next, peel and slice the bananas. Mix them with the sugar and other household stuff until it has a custard like consistency. Place this on top of the flour paste and bake 'em. When its done, go crazy with some cool whip and have a bake sale... :eugeek:

Now, take the proceeds from the bake sale and go buy some malt and grains... then mash, ferment and distill. Its a foolproof approach to a good banana likker. :wtf:
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by frozenthunderbolt »

. . . otherwize search for "Dr Greenthumbs Banana Brandy"
Where has all the rum gone? . . .

Every new member should read this before doing anything else:
junkyard dawg
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by junkyard dawg »

:lol:

Ok, while it does not appeal to me at all...

Banana shine is a worthy goal. Isn't the infamous Ugandan shine made from bananas? Might also try searching Wajiri?

Good luck!
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Copperpot85
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by Copperpot85 »

While making pies doesn't really have anything to do with my post. I forgot one show people made people hate things about distilling. I'm not making bannana because of a show. I happend to have gotten them for nothing. And I'm up to trying to ferment about anything. It's been a working 3 days or so I will know before to long if its worth drinking. But I may try your pie recipe I'm sure my cap is big enough to cook a good bannana pie lol
junkyard dawg
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by junkyard dawg »

My post was joking, but I didn't mean disrespect.

Using free fruits or vegetables or grains is about the only thing I distill anymore. I completely respect making something out of what you have.

I'll be curious to hear how this comes out. More curious to hear what you learned doing it. Banana has to be pretty easy and its pretty cheap. Let us all know!
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Copperpot85
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by Copperpot85 »

Will let you know how it goes. I hope it isn't horrible,but if it is I only have sugar and spring water and yeast in it. I hope it has good flavor. If not I will go back to good old corn.
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by Copperpot85 »

I would love to try some of the different grains but I haven't ventured that far yet. I'm sorry about my reply last night. I shouldn't have been snappy. I know you we're just joking around. But I have caught some hell on here from people for saying the word bannana. One stupid show with people making distilled water ruined on of the easiest fruits there is to find in a larger quantity. But thanks for the posts.
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by FranklinNewhart »

Well I came to this one and I went to other threads on here as well and it seems they all peter out and do not get down to explaining how it all went and how it turned out. There seems to be a paucity of information on Brewing Bananas. I just got 3 and a half cases today and I am trying to do some homework before I start playing Harry Chapin's "Thirty Thousand Pounds of Bananas" while I brew them up. I have decided though to add some Euro-Pils malt to the recipe and use that to convert the starch. I checked the fruit tonight and they are really ripe but only about one third is converted to sugar. I want to liquefy those babies and it is going to take Malt to do that. Gunna add in a bunch of Raisins and a few Lemons to even out the ph and when it is mostly cooked I think a couple of cartons of Blackstrap Molasses. Some Dates might be a good idea to. Looks like I will be ending up with about 200 Litres but just guessing on that one. We will know better on the Morrow.

I will be keeping it all posted on how it goes. We need a complete flow description from start to finish so others on here can profit from it all.
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by aceswired »

Roast them at 160 for a few hours in the oven, in the peels. Converts the sugars and brings the flavor. Mash them up in water. Ferment it all, with the peels. It'll be a banana flavor bomb, especially with no added sugar.

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FranklinNewhart
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by FranklinNewhart »

Well after a lot of research last night I came up with a recipe that we spent the day doing. First thing this morning I went at a test batch to do some trial and error stuff. Two cup of water in the blender and four bananas made a good slurry that could be poured into the pot. I did four batches in the blender so 8 cups of water and 16 bananas. To this I added a cup of Euro-Pils malt to the slurry and eight more cups of water to thin it down. Boiled it up just like I was making Beer with all the appropriate rests and after resting it at 165 F I did an Iodine test to see where I was at. I could not see anything in the sight glass so I put some on a slide and looked at under the microscope. The crumbs of Malt Husk still had some purple to them but everything else was Iodine Brown.

Good to go. Now the work.

Here is the recipe I came up with.
40 Litres of water.
80 Bananas
2.6 Lbs. Euro-Pils Malt
I carton of Molasses
I bag of Raisins puried with 2 cups water in a blender
2 lemons puried with two cups water in a blender {Skins and All}
Yeast Nutrient
Enough white sugar to bring the wash up to 11 % ABV potential

Wash is two thick to run through my cooler system so I am letting it cool in the fermenter over night.
Running a fish tank bubbler for 12 hours to oxegenate the wash.

10 Grams {Two Packages} Lalvin EC-1118 yeast. Hydrate in water before pitching.

I have to do this all over again tomorrow because I only used half the Bananas today.
With everything in the fermenter it has come to 100 litres. Tomorrows run will be another 100 litres as well.
I am going to have to break it down into three fermenters though because I understand it foams a lot while it is working and my fermenters are full to the top with 100 litres so it will be better if I go with 66 litres in each fermenter and go with three of them.

I will keep this thread up dated so everybody can eventually have a decent recipe to follow when they get some of that almost free fruit.
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Truckinbutch
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by Truckinbutch »

Please keep us updated . This sounds like a fun project .
If you ain't the lead dog in the team , the scenery never changes . Ga Flatwoods made my avatar and I want to thank him for that .
Don't drink water , fish fornicate in it .
FranklinNewhart
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by FranklinNewhart »

Truckinbutch wrote:Please keep us updated . This sounds like a fun project .
Fun? You say fun. It's bloody well a lot of hard work. My wife's Ford 4X4 has a broken front left CV Joint and I am hiding in my basement until the parts come.
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Truckinbutch
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by Truckinbutch »

FranklinNewhart wrote:
Truckinbutch wrote:Please keep us updated . This sounds like a fun project .
Fun? You say fun. It's bloody well a lot of hard work. My wife's Ford 4X4 has a broken front left CV Joint and I am hiding in my basement until the parts come.
Well .............. 'scuse me :oops: You're the fucker that took on this project . :moresarcasm:
Me and SRD could have been skating along with sugarheads except we took brethren advice and dived into AG . It's a matter of choice .
If I had to make the choice I'd fuck with the nanners rather than fix a Ford 4x4 cv joint . And I am a Ford fan .
I hope you take this in the same good fun that I posted it .
If you ain't the lead dog in the team , the scenery never changes . Ga Flatwoods made my avatar and I want to thank him for that .
Don't drink water , fish fornicate in it .
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by FranklinNewhart »

Didn't say it wasn't fun. Just said it was a lot of hard work. I was brought up on the concept of, If you don't work then you don't eat.
Well in this case Drink, and I am going to need a lot of that when I am the Dumb Arse Under the Vehicle at Zombie Motors. I Resurrect Dead Cars.

Not a Ford Fan either. Wife buys Ford Truck with income tax money. February 2016. April 2016, Transfer Case goes. June 2016, Finally get new transfer case in. August 2016, Transmission blows. October 2016, Finished Rebuilding Transmission and gets truck back on the road. February 2017, CV Joint blows and shaft comes apart. Wife does Income Taxes to get money to buy needed parts. Going to do whole front, both shafts and both wheel bearings. Hiding in basement with Son and Brewing. Hiding from wife and Ford Truck. Took 1999 Chev 4X4 out of winter storage and Zoom it goes as always.

I understand your Fecitious Humour because I use a lot of that myself. Hope you get mine.

No wonder I go for Bananas. I am Bananas.

And your tag line about the dog team. I am a musher with a team of dogs. I get the same view as all the dogs but one.
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Truckinbutch
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by Truckinbutch »

WAA , WAA , WAA :cry: Drove 3 million miles OTR as an owner/operator . SOH and I agreed that we was just drivin from one breakdown to the next . The trick was to hang on to enough money during that trip to fix the next break .
I like this hobby much more than being a professional tourist .
I think I am inclined to like you and your humor . Never mushed a dog team but I have handled the ribbons on a 6 up Yankee Style team of drafters . Similar except horse farts can't compare to dog farts .
If you ain't the lead dog in the team , the scenery never changes . Ga Flatwoods made my avatar and I want to thank him for that .
Don't drink water , fish fornicate in it .
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by aceswired »

Psst ... if you roast them they liquify. No blending needed.... ;)
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by FranklinNewhart »

aceswired wrote:Psst ... if you roast them they liquify. No blending needed.... ;)
Still gotta add water at some point. I did hear about roasting them though. Just found it was quicker and easier to do them this way.
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by FranklinNewhart »

Truckinbutch wrote:WAA , WAA , WAA :cry: Drove 3 million miles OTR as an owner/operator . SOH and I agreed that we was just drivin from one breakdown to the next . The trick was to hang on to enough money during that trip to fix the next break .
I like this hobby much more than being a professional tourist .
I think I am inclined to like you and your humor . Never mushed a dog team but I have handled the ribbons on a 6 up Yankee Style team of drafters . Similar except horse farts can't compare to dog farts .
I was raised on an Northern Ontario Farm and was driving a six horse team when I was twelve and skidding logs with them, not sitting up in a nice seat behind a dress team in brass and bells pulling a beer wagon full of empty barrels.
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by FranklinNewhart »

well enough of the off topic on this thread. Getting back to brewing the Bananas. I just want to mention that in the recipe a bunch of that water is used two cups at a time in the blender with four bananas.
Also I use a 60 litre Sanke Keg as a boiler. That is 13 1/2 US Gallons. I did the boil in two parts. All the 80 Banana slurry with the Malt added in and some more water added to almost fill the pot. Boiled this with malt rests until done.
I then put this in the fermenter and did a second boil. Well not actually a boil. Just put in 20 litres of Hot tap water and added the sugar. One whole 10 Kg bag plus about 2 more Kg I had left in another bag. Put the Raisins and the Lemon slurry in this pot along with one box of Black Strap Molasses. Stirred it all until everything was dissolved. I use a Louisville Slugger Base Ball Bat for a stir paddle. I then poured this in with the first boil and ended up with 100 litres of slop. I won't say wort. It looks more like slop, but it smells nice. That I left to cool overnight with the fish tank bubbler working away putting oxygen into it for me. I have not pitched the yeast yet. Today I will be doing the whole process over again on the rest of the bananas. Once that is done I will use the cooled batch to blend with the hot batch and that should get the temp down quicker on everything. Divvy it out into three Fermenters so there is lots of room for foaming and put the air to them all until they are cool. Then I will pitch the yeast.
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by MichiganCornhusker »

FranklinNewhart wrote:...Still gotta add water at some point.
Nope. I was able to ferment pure banana with no water or added sugars.
I estimated an OG of around 1.050 and it really thinned out during fermentation.
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by FranklinNewhart »

MichiganCornhusker wrote:
FranklinNewhart wrote:...Still gotta add water at some point.
Nope. I was able to ferment pure banana with no water or added sugars.
I estimated an OG of around 1.050 and it really thinned out during fermentation.
I am hoping for some thinning to. That slop is slimy. Read my next post where I tell you what I did about it.
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by FranklinNewhart »

Well here is an update on todays work. Big changes in how much wash there is. First of all there was still more bananas in the second half than there was in the first. Went to set up two more fermenters and could not find the lids. Even worse one of them had the drain fitting removed and I couldn't find the thing. Today is Sunday and tomorrow is a Stat Holiday so no luck getting to the CO-OP. Well I have one alternative left. I have in the corner of my lab an 800 litre fermenter. That is right, 800 litres. I installed it three years ago and I have never used it. Well go to work and sanitize that bugger. That is a chore. Now to start boiling. Everything went pretty much the same as yesterday and I had to lug everything over to that fermenter by hand because I didn't want to pump that slime through my system. Got everything in and had just over 200 litres. Not very much in an 800 litre pot. So lets thin it down if we can. Fill a garbage can with Hot water and start dropping in bags of sugar. Add two more boxed of Molasses and a bunch more yeast nutrient and pour it all in. Stir it around and check the ABV potential. It was up around 14. I am using wine yeast so lets add some more water. Get it down around 11. So I started adding water and checking. We ended at 10% and had 400 litres of wash that was now reasonably thin. Well it is half full so now that isn't to bad. Good thing I had a bunch of sugar. I am out now. Gotta buy more. Put the bubbler in and I am leaving it over night. I will see what the temp is in the morning and I will get the yeast pitched. Looks like I will be having to use about four packages.

When this is done I will be running it in 20 litre batches. That is 20 runs in the still. I am also waiting for 100 Litres of Lemon wash to finish. That is 5 more runs. And 50 litres of apple wash. I can get that into two runs. So I am looking at 27 runs in the near future. That is a lot of product.
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by Truckinbutch »

That's a lot of runs . Look at the product you will be gaining . I 'spect that would hold SRD , Coalminer , and I for every bit of a week .
If you ain't the lead dog in the team , the scenery never changes . Ga Flatwoods made my avatar and I want to thank him for that .
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by FranklinNewhart »

Three runs a day. 27 runs to do. 9 days work. A little more than a week and then there is the double distilling of the heads and tails to clean out the garbage and I figure it is going to be the better part of two weeks to get it all done. I think when this is out of the road I am going to go back to making some Beer instead. Lot less work.
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NZChris
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by NZChris »

It sounds like you need a preheater already. Mine just did seven 23l strips in ten hours. Out of bed at six, at the pub by four thirty in the arvo.
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by Pikey »

NZChris wrote:It sounds like you need a preheater already. Mine just did seven 23l strips in ten hours. Out of bed at six, at the pub by four thirty in the arvo.
That's amazing Chris - do you power both your cooker and your pre-cooker with propane ?
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by NZChris »

Pikey wrote:
NZChris wrote:It sounds like you need a preheater already. Mine just did seven 23l strips in ten hours. Out of bed at six, at the pub by four thirty in the arvo.
That's amazing Chris - do you power both your cooker and your pre-cooker with propane ?
Electric, but only the main boiler is powered. The preheater goes between the lyne arm and the condenser and is heated by the condensate, saving both heating energy and condenser cooling water.
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by Pikey »

Clever :) really clever ! 8)
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Re: 75 pounds of free ripe bannanas need a little help

Post by FranklinNewhart »

I suppose I could build a whole new still with continuous wort injection and double reflux columns with a reboiler at the bottom with distilled water overflow coming out at the bottom and product out at the top. Gee that would be just like the big one they use over at the Encanna oil refinery south of Weyburn. But then a project like that would take a whole lot more than two weeks to build. Naw, I will just put the time in hiding in my hole doing three batches a day and "Git 'er Done"
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