Banana – Lavender Honey Mead: An Arranged Marriage

Bananas and Lavender Honey

It isn’t often that I make something that wasn’t riotously planned out with an exact flavor in mind for the outcome.  This is one of the exceptions.

My wife and I had a couple pastele making days this winter. If you don’t know what pastels are, think of tamales but made with plantains and green bananas instead of corn.  When my wife went into the grocery store to buy the bananas, she said to the produce clerk, “I need ____ pounds of green bananas.”  The clerk told her that if she purchased a whole box of bananas, that she would get a much lower cost per pound on the bananas.

So she bought awhole box.

Pasteles are awesome.  I could eat them until I puke and then eat some more.

On New Year’sDay, we made 100 pastales.

We had 35 green bananas left over.

What do you do with 35 bananas?


I knew it was going to take weeks for them to ripen.  And when they did ripen, they would only be good for a week, maybe a week and a half.  I can’t eat 35 bananas in 10 days.

So I pulled out the beer and wine books.  I didn’t want to make a beer.  I have a cherry bock that already needs to be brewed.  I’m waiting for a day warm enough for me to spend several hours outside brewing it.  I think our high temperatures have only cracked 30F twice in the last three weeks. Lows have been between 0F and 15F.

I found a one gallon wine recipe that used bananas.  But the banana’s seemed to be a small percentage of the fermentables.  Most of the fermentables were granular sugar.

I have a phobia about fermenting straight table sugar. It tastes cloying and cidery to me, and not in a good way.  The closest I come to using table sugar is Belgian Candi Sugar in Belgian style beers. Otherwise, I always use something else:  agave or honey.

So that meant I was going to do a banana mead.  Sure, no problem… except it is January.  Not a whole lot of varieties to pick from at the apiary in January.  My two choices were local/wildflower honey or lavender honey.

Local honey has a strong flavor and a dark color.  So does lavender honey for that matter, but at least it has a single dominate flavor.

And so the marriage of Bananas to Lavender Honey was arranged.

2013 Banana – Lavender Honey Mead

Starter with Lalvin 71B-1122

The recipe:

11.32 lbs of Lavender Honey

1 lb of golden raisins (for body)

9.8 lbs of bananas (35 bananas, weight of skins not included)

3 packets of Lalvin 71B-1122 Narbonne Yeast

½ tsp yeast nutrient

2.5 tsp pectic enzyme

5 camden tablets

4 gallons of water

OG = 1.108

Anticipated FG =1.028 or lower

Anticipated ABV = 10.5%

First I made a starter with the yeast nutrient, ¾ gallon of water and 0.8lb of honey.  I brought the water to a boil.  Added the yeast nutrient.  Boiled 8 minutes.  Added the 0.8lb of honey.  Cooled the starter must and added the three yeast packets.  0.8 lbs of honey in ¾ gallon of water makes a roughtly 1.045 OG starter.

Pealed Bananas in Strainer Bag

A couple of notes:  apparently banana skins can be used in brewing banana wines and mead.  However, if you want to use the skins, buy organic bananas. Non-organic bananas are heavily sprayed with a fungicide.  You don’t want that getting into your must.

Also, when using bananas, you do not want to put the whole fruit into your fermentor, unless you keep it in a strainer bag.  I used the pulping technique.

Because I didn’thave a grain bag on hand, I ran to the hardware store and picked up a 5 gallon nylon paint strainer bag.  It’s great because it has an elastic band sewn into it and I could stretch it across the top of my pot.  I then peeled and placed all the bananas inside.  Then I tied the bag closed with butcher twine.  I then brought the water temperature up to 135F and mashed the bananas with a potato masher.  (135F water is kind of hot for your bare hand.  I used silicone oven mitts to protect my hand.)

Starter Fermenting, Must in Background

When the bananas are completely mashed, let soak in the 135F water for 30 minutes to extract the sugars.  Squeeze as much water as you canfrom the bag.

Add your honey to the fermentor.  Add the banana water to the fermentor.  Add the 5 camden tables to the fermentor.  Mix.

I have an extremely long stir stick I can connect to my cordless drill.  I used this to mix up the honey and banana water and dissolve the campden tablets.

I then moved the fermentor and the starter to my brew closet and let set overnight.

By morning, the starter was going nuts and wild bacteria and yeast appeared to have been killed off in the must because the airlock on it was completely still.  I poured the entire starter into the fermentor.  I also added the pectic enzyme.  Fermentation of the must was evident within the hour.

Some more notes:
1)  Since the brewday, I have found out more about Lalvin 71B.  My experience making wines and meads is pretty limited and I've only used one or two varieties of wine yeast before.  Lalvin 71B prefers to have small doses of nutrients during fermentation, not all the nutrients up front.  Next time I use this yeast, I'll be sure to do that.
2)  I chose Lalvin 71B because I wanted to accentuate the fruitiness of this brew.  This yeast is supposed to give a "fruit salad" flavor.  Should be interesting with the bananas.
3)  Lalvin 71 will ferment some malolactic acid.  It should give it a rounder, fuller mouthfeel.
4)  Raisins are good to add to wine and mead for a couple reasons:  adds more fermentables, adds more nutrients, and increases the body of the wine/mead.  I've used them in three different recipes and all of them turned out better than the recipes when I wasn't using them.  I have also used dates for the same purpose.