Joe,
yes, there is. But the only thing that works with banana is to fill the
carboy max. 60 %. Bananas contain the perfect nutrients for your yeast, so
these critters go beserk when introduced to banana. The first few times I
used banana, the floor, the wall and the ceiling (yes!) made me think too I
did something wrong. Took me some time before I figured it out. Filling my
carboy to max 60 % worked fine for me. Yeast works frantically; wine is very
soon ready. Syphon off the lees when all activity has ended into smaller
carboy or/and fill carboy up with applewine. Treat like any other wine from
that point. I am a experienced homewinemaker, and I love the contribution of
bananawine (tasteless, unless you cook the peel too) to applewine for
instance. If you want to do yourself a huge favour, make some applewine; use
Liebfraumilch yeast for that and add 10 % bananawine when the applewine is
ready. Give it some time to "get married". Full mouth, full taste, excellent
flavour. One of the finest white wines I make.

No flowers, no bees;
no leaves on the trees;
no wonder;
november.

Ed

----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe" >
Newsgroups: rec.crafts.winemaking
Sent: Tuesday, March 02, 2004 1:38 PM
Subject: head on wine


> Just to give a little intro, i have been homebrewing beer for some time
now,
> but the banana wine was my first batch of wine. Since my carboys were in
> use for my beer batch, I picked up a 1 1/2 gallon fermenter (plastic) from
> my homebrew store. About 16 hours after pitching the yeast, I noticed
some
> activity in the airlock. Then about 2 hours later I look over at it, and
> the head had clogged up the airlock. I quickly got some isodopher
(however
> you spell it) setup to sanitize and washed, then sanitized the lid and
> airlock. then it did it again, then just now when i woke up. I did a 1
> gallon batch, but the people at the homebrew store said that the bucket
> would be big enough. I asked about this. is there anything that i can do
> with wine to keep the head down?
>
> Thanks,
> Joe
>
>