Making Tasty Distilled Alcohol From BANANAS

bananas the world's most consumed fruit we're going to take 20 kilos of reject bananas today and turn it into brandy this brandy to be precise banana brandy cheers guys how's it going chases i hope you're having a kick-ass week i'm jesse and this is still it and it is always a little bit a little bit of a mystery exactly what flavors are gonna carry over from a recipe through distillation that is not the case with this banana brandy i gotta tell you guys this is uh this is pretty special in case you'd like to follow along at home let me give you a quick idea of everything you're gonna need right at the beginning bananas a buttload of them yeast yeast nutrient sugar more water citric acid and of course a still i'm going to be using the t500 from still spirits with the alembic dome over the last few years i have distilled with a whole lot of different ingredients but never with bananas so because of that i decided to bring someone in to give a few pointers for this video you'll be seeing a beaver diy popping up from time to time to give us those extra little handy pointers but honestly as far as distilled spirits go this recipe is really pretty simple so uh let's get stuck in shall we we're gonna need some bananas so this recipe is going to require 10 kilos of bananas 22 pounds it's going to make a 20 liter wash that much in freedom units and it is going to result in about two to three liters of banana brandy depending on your cuts and depending on exactly how far you proof it down i'm actually going to be making a double batch so that'll be 20 kilos of bananas or 44 pounds of bananas but i'll be giving you volumes for each along the way so you can follow along now this next part uh some of you might laugh at this and think i'm a little bit crazy but that's because you can get cheap bananas year-round that's lovely for you but here's the thing guys people buy fruit with their eyes it's gotta look good so if you go to pretty much any shop that sells bananas and ask them nicely chances are they're going to have rejects or seconds or cosmetic seconds whatever they call them specifically where you are sitting at the back for a fraction of the price so for me at the local vegetable shop buying 20 kilos of reject bananas with the help of my wonderful assistant cost me 15 as opposed to something more like 70. well worth it guys you're buying this many bananas they're unlikely to all be at the ideal level of ripeness at the same time but we have a strategy to deal with this first of all let's deal with the bananas that are already over ripe and this honestly guys is really pretty simple just peel them cut off any bits that are just way too far gone or just completely mush whack all of the good stuff into a ziploc bag and pop it into the freezer next up the bananas that are too green the ones that aren't ripe enough yet and likely won't be ripe enough by the time you know you're ready to brew easy just do the exact opposite gather them all together get them nice and close and then wrap them in something like a plastic sheet if you're doing this on a giant scale like a tarpaulin will work so i must admit that when i first thought about making something from bananas i'd assumed that i'd be using enzymes in some capacity to convert some starch into bananas and to sugar turns out that's not really the case here's beaver diy to uh give you a little bit more information so if you look at a unripe banana that's a lot of starches in there but once a banana is ripe you're looking at about one percent starch you go completely black then you get 23 percent sugar out of that that will not but just because we're not doing anything crazy on the enzyme side doesn't mean that we can't do a few things to sort of boost the flavor profile a little bit here's beaver diy with another one of his ideas what i do with a banana brand is half of the bananas i go just to ripe yellow and then i leave the other half oven nice and hot so they go nice and black and the sugar is inside caramelized so pick out five kilos of the ripest bananas you have or ten kilos if you're doing a double batch like me pop those aside we're going to use those later on we're not cooking them at all we use them as they are the next four kilos or eight kilos if you're doing a double like me we're going to line up on baking trays and pop them into a 160 degree celsius oven that's this in fahrenheit and leave them in there for 15 to 25ish minutes what you're looking for is all of the skins to go black and a couple of the bananas to start splitting some of the more attentive amongst you may have realized that we've got a kilo left over if you're doing a single batch or two kilos doing a double batch like me of bananas that we haven't used yet that is because we're turning those into specialty bananas i think really dialing up the caramelized cooked banana effect and this is well worth it so here's what we're going to do guys take a large frying pan and get it over medium heat drop in a small knob of butter until it starts foaming or at least melts and pop your bananas in on top of it cook them for a little while turn them every now and again until they start to gain some color and they're semi-cooked through at which point you're gonna sprinkle two tablespoons of brown sugar all over the top keep cooking and keep turning the bananas until they're completely cooked through and they've developed a really nice brown color on the outside and now you're ready to add your raw ripe bananas your oven cooked bananas and your pan cooked bananas all into a large pot vessel fermenter whatever you've got to work with if you're doing a single batch you're going to want to get something that's at least about 30 liters in volume if you're doing a double batch you're going to want something that is at least 50 liters in volume now like beaver said earlier on we're only getting about 18 to 23 sugar from these bananas and then i'll wash that's going to shake out to about four and a half to six percent depending on exactly how things work not quite high enough for me so i'm going to be using sugar to bump up the abv and lately i've been using a lot of inverted sugar for this kind of thing so if you're doing a single batch take two kilos of sugar add it into three kilos of hot water and dissolve it once it's dissolved you can start it simmering and add two teaspoons of citric acid and let it simmer away for 20 minutes obviously i'm doing a double batch i'm gonna double all of those volumes once it's simmered for 20 minutes we can add it into the pot with our bananas just keep in mind guys that this sugar water is really really freaking hot so be careful but also don't let it sit with the bananas for any length of time because it will cook the raw bananas through and we don't want that add cold water in straight away and we're aiming for a total volume of 20 liters for a single batch or 40 liters for a double all you need to do now is give the whole thing a really good blitz with an electric drill and a paint mixer and we're kind of we're wanting to break the banana up to basically a puree and just get everything really well mixed this is the point where i'm going to split my batch into two different fermenters because i want to experiment with something if you want to do that then go right ahead but you don't need to what you do need to do however is make sure that you leave some decent room in the top of your fermenter bever has something to say about this as well tons of headroom that thing makes a fruit cap like no one's business i've painted ceilings planted walls so i'm pushing things a little bit i've got two 35 liter fermenters and i've got 20 liters of wash in each of them i've just realized i've got a double merch on i try to never do that but anyway if you want to look like a muppet like me as well there's links in the description below now it's time to talk about yeast and this is the reason i decided to do a double batch and split it i wanted to try two different yeasts see if it made a difference between the two batches and then give you guys a recommendation on what i prefer or let you choose what makes sense for you it's also a great time to let you guys know that the sponsor of this video is still spirits thanks a bunch guys as well as sponsoring the video they also sent along some of their distillers series rum yeast which is the first yeast we're going to be using the reason i wanted to use a rum yeast is that in my mind rum and molasses have a lot of very similar flavors to banana so it just kind of made sense to see if the yeast would play well with banana as well as molasses still spirits rum yeast comes in a 20 gram packet and i think that's about a perfect pitching rate for this size wash we'll also be using some still spirits distillers dark nutrients and following the instructions on the back for a fruit wash obviously if you have a different brand of nutrient that's totally fine if you're using dap totally fine i think with just straight bananas it's probably smart to put some sort of nutrient in there though anyway the other yeast that i want to use is lalvin ec triple one eight at the end of the day this is a fruit wine that we're making before we distill it so it made sense to give a a wine yeast to go basically yes this actually is triple one eight it's just been repackaged and it comes in a 10 gram bag we'll be using two of those and the same amount of nutrients to make things all even stevens with the rum yeast to follow up on what bieber was saying earlier about this stuff getting a little feisty during fermentation i'd suggest using a loosely fitting lid rather than air locking this just in case it does get a little bit crazy and if you have the ability temperature controlling it to around about 25 degrees isn't a bad idea either it is going to form a pretty serious fruit cap so knocking that down daily at least until fermentation really starts to slow out once again is a pretty good idea fermentation is going to take somewhere between a week and two and a half weeks most likely and you'll be able to tell that it's done when the fruit cap sort of starts to sink right down to the bottom anyway with fermentation out of the way it's time to talk about distilling and a 20 liter wash is kind of an awkward volume for me it is borderline too small to run it on my 50 liter still as a one and done with bubble plates but it's not big enough to do multiple stripping runs with the t500 and build up low wines so what we're going to do today is kind of a version of what we call a one and a half run but first we need to strain the chunky stuff out of the wash and like i said now that that fruit cap is sitting down near the bottom it's going to make things a whole lot easier so luckily i have this pretty awesome piece of kit that is going to act like a giant sieve and strain a lot quicker than other ways of doing it and all i'm going to do is tip the top three quarts of the wash in that's still relatively clear and get that strained out first but if you don't have something like this to use at home beaver's got a really good tip for you on this one as well you're gonna filter it so i take it the day beforehand throw it through a normal mud or a uh t-sloth leave it overnight the sediment does settle out but if you're gonna draw off the top you're gonna have a ton of wasted i take mine tip it over the bucket and then just leave it to drain overnight to get started i'm going to add 15 litres of wash into the t500 if you didn't follow beaver's instructions and strain overnight get the rest of the chunky stuff out of the fermenter into whatever straining method you're using we'll let that strain out for a couple of hours while the still is running this first distillation we're gonna run just like any old normal stripping run so we're gonna run as fast as the still will allow us to run and we're gonna collect without making cuts all the way down i urge you please go down at least to 15 coming off the still personally for this one i went all the way down to five percent for two reasons one i didn't want to lose product uh and i also wanted volume to put back into the still which is what we're trying to kind of combat with this whole one-and-a-half run thing once we're finished with the first dripping run empty the still out and discard that and then it's time to add back in the low ones that we collected from the first dripping run and the rest of our wash and now we're ready for our spirit run we're going to run this very very differently to the stripping run we're going to run it low and slow for those of you that don't know you can't adjust the power on a t500 but it's a completely analog system so it's really easy to just plug it into some sort of power regulator i ended up running it around about half power for this run so i took 50 mils of 4 shots 700 mils of heads before moving into the hearts and collecting basically until the desirable flavors started to fade away and for me that was cutting off right around the 50 mark coming off the still i repeated the entire distillation process as closely as i could with the second batch both banana brandies were then proofed down to 45 abv ready for tasting uh and once again like i've been doing recently we're going to bring my wife erin into taste with me because she can be a little bit more objective she doesn't really care about the geeky stuff she just likes drinking tasty things i'll edit it right down to a short little snippet for you guys but the patreons i'll put the full version up over on patreon for you guys to watch that all right guys it is tasting time with wifey and it's kind of official because uh check it out you've got your own mic now i got mike she got mike i didn't like it either i tried to put my hand down her top too uh i did not like it i got rejected very sad uh anyway this is the uh rum yeast version and that is the ec triple 1 8 yeast do you care i don't even know what that means didn't think so there you go so we're keeping some semblance of objectivity here wow i cannot believe how bananary this is so banana-y all right banana banana that's so it's so oven banana dessert like barbecue and barbecue banana yes i completely agree they are both really good they are both really good i'm impressed with this i like this one better i would agree this one tastes a little cheap for new viewers to the channel we've arrived at the point of the video where erin's called something cheap with no other descriptive force along with it this one's like the full monty whatever the word is this is like the full thing the taste and the aftertaste it's all really nice this one cheeps out with the aftertaste oh i actually just got it in my eye did you just throw it the interesting thing to me is that this to me has more fresh banana flavor like you peeled a banana and smelled it or tasted it would you agree with that yeah and then it kind of disappears like a more fresh a green banana and you're right it does finish on that almost um metallic taste you get from banana sometimes right like a really green banana this is why i bring here guys i'm telling you i would never have got that this one just tastes like pan fried or grilled banana with sugar yeah like brown sugar caramelized that that's the main flavor in this one right yeah definitely with a little bit of that kind of banana cake banana as well yeah i guess a little bit they both are really good they're really different though like i think i could tell them apart should we play okay can i try the other one yeah i'm sure this is a green banana one yeah and that other one's there yeah you're right so if all i served you was this one would you be impressed yeah yeah but there's just something about this one that yeah that one's like special it's got the full you're like oh it's tastes expensive tastes a little cheap it's true erin's taken the drink that i preferred inside and left me with this one but before i say anything else i just want to say and i want to like officially put this on record that's there's a lot of different things that could have changed in the method uh it's not necessarily just the yeast that is the deciding or the different factor here it could easily have been a difference in distillation that got us half of this way i would have to run this test multiple times to even begin to say that that's really what the difference is but in some ways it makes sense right the flavors that are being pulled out in the version that was made with the distillers series rum yeast are flavors that are more similar to rum it is caramelized sugar it is a thick full bodied sort of grungy sugar flavor that's lingering at the end that makes it full and desserty on the pellet on the finish whereas this one has more of the straight fruit flavor the straight like fresh banana flavor and this is the fruit yeast so i don't know guys if anyone else here is willing to uh do the same test again please come back put your comment in the comment section down below let us know what your findings were i'm sure anyone that watches this video in the future will be very very appreciative anyway i need to say a huge huge thank you to the patreons these are the people that let me do this on a weekly basis so thank you so much uh i have heard reports from a few of you saying that your names haven't shown up some of the newer patreons i hope i've got that sort of this week uh let me know if you're still missing and uh i'll do what i can for the next video anyway guys i 100 meant what i said near the beginning of this video where i said that this is totally something that you should try the amount of flavor that's come through on both of these is ridiculous this is my least favorite of the two spirits that i made the one with the ec triple one eight and if this was all i had i would be very happy so i can't recommend this enough uh thank you also to beaver diy for helping me out on this uh thanks dude i don't know if i would have jumped into this so eagerly without your help so i really do appreciate it for those of you that haven't seen his channel check him out he's making some cool stuff definitely an up-and-coming distilling channel there's a link in the in the description down below to go and check him out if you like this video please guys give it a thumbs up that really does help me out and it cost you nothing so get on that like button for me drop a comment in the comment section down below if you have something to say and and i'll catch you next time guys keep on chasing the craft see ya

Channel: Still It

Views: 838,295

Keywords: Banana Brandy, Banana Vodka, Banana Spirit, Banana Aqavite, banana Rakia, how to make, how to distil, make banana brandy at home, Distilling, Jesse, Chase the craft, Still It, Home distilling

Id: qjNJO580rnM

Length: 19min 5sec (1145 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021