Bananas

Bill, I just had a chance to taste my first try at cranberry wine at Thanksgiving. It was very cranberryish - slightly tart, very fruity, and slightly sweet (which I like). We all thought it was very good. I added 1 can of 100% Welch's white grape juice for body, Montrachet yeast, and it was about 12% alcohol by volume. I did not test for PH or TA. Darlene

I use 20 pounds of cranberries (or other berry fruit) and five bananas. You can use more bananas if you wish.

vince norris

Hey Bill, I won't be much help re bananas or fruit wines in general as I haven't done any work in that area. I have read that bananas are frequently used to add body, particularly for the heavier wine, e.g. port style.

Another source of info regarding cranberry wine would be our friend Del Unruh. He has made some that my wife & I thought was very nice. It was, admittedly, a light wine which made it a fun wine for us. Del has also done a fine Chokecherry wine and some other fruit wines..

Fred

I am currently making apple wine. This is what the recipe says about using bananas. It calls for six bananas.

(Apple wines tend to lack body, so in order to provide an improved mouth-feel of thin wines banana juice can added to the mixture; banana juice does not change the flavor of wines to which it is added. Here's how to extract banana juice: Heat to simmering temp. 1 quart of water in a

3-quart sauce pan. Reduce heat to very low simmer and add 6 banana, thinly sliced length-wise in order to provide maximum surface area. Steep the banana slices in hot water for about two hours. Allow to cool, then strain out the liquid and stir it into the wine mixture.

hope this helps

Bill, I've been occasionally using a powdered banana product for several years now at the rate of 2.5 oz. per gallon. I believe (but am not sure) that that works out to about a pound of ripe babanas.

Your cranberry wine -- did you use commercial or wild cranberries? I ask because the commercial usually come out tarter than wild because they are picked under-ripe for shipment and are just too acidic. On the other hand, if you buy them from a grower who picks them at the peak of ripeness and sells direct or ships them cold, they can be even better than wild.

Good luck with the bananas, and please do report back to us next year. That's how we all learn.

Jack Keller, The Winemaking Home Page

Bill,

Two years ago I made a cranberry mead to my (soon to be) mother-in-law's Thanksgiving cranberry relish recipe, and I didn't find it to be thin at all. The recipe was very simple, 2 12 oz bags of fresh cranberries, 2 navel oranges, 3/4 cup sugar, and spices. My conversion of this to a beverage was to make it a mead, using the 2 12oz bags of fresh cranberries, the fruit and zest of 2 navel oranges (eliminating the pith, which adds a bitter component to a wine or mead), and the spices. I used honey to bring it up to wine strength, fermented it dry, and I thought it was a very nice mead. It wasn't a heavy bodied mead, but it wasn't thin at all either.

The above doesn't precisely address your question, and so I offer the following: If you start with a wine or mead of 1.090-1.100 SG, and use nearly any commercial wine yeast, you should end up with a dry wine or mead. This may eliminate the issue you had with your wine, which you say was too sweet for your tastes.

Alternatively, you may use grape juice to add body, or you may blend with a full bodied wine or mead to bring the cranberry wine to the body that you will enjoy. I've made many gallons of both golden and black raisin mead for the purpose of blending, as this mead has an incredible body to it that blends well with a lesser bodied wine or mead to hide that deficiency.

Jack - I used grocery store, unfrozen cranberries that I bought after Thanksgiving. This wine is quite tart at 1.0% acid. I'm going to tinker with the acidity...measure the acid in Ocean Spray Cranberry Cocktail and use that as a target. I find the OSCC a very pleasant cranberry drink. My wine was better mixed with OSCC at the time of serving. While too sweet for my taster I got some nice comments from those I gave the wine to and requests for another bottle. Bill Frazier Olathe, Kansas

Jack,

What you said about commercial cranberries being tart makes sense to me now. Last Jan2 I bought a whole bunch of these from the store and froze them until the summer when I made my wine based on a recipe from your sight. My pH meter was acting up so I didn't check the must. It finished up with a pH of nearly 3.0, far too acidic. Is cold-stabilizing likely to help raise the pH?

Thanks, Richard

Last year I used Jack's highbush cranberry wine recipe:

It came out super dry and has a glorious floral aroma. But I used store bought cranberries and it was very acidic. (1.2 if I remember right.) I just sweetened it to 2% RS to offset the acid. It might be more to your liking but use a hydrometer to set the sugar level instead of following any recipe. Next time I may cut the cranberries form 3 to 2 lbs and increase the raisins or use some Welch's frozen grape juice. A pound of banana's will not hurt anything but what I made has plenty of body. Probably from the raisins.

Ray

Richard, if you drop any acid in the process, it might. I've never used this approach for pH, only TA. Others might have some insight. If not, try it and see, then let us know.

Jack Keller, The Winemaking Home Page