Long ago, in a land far away (Canada, actually) I used to partake in an event called William Tell.

At that time in my life, my family was actively involved in making wine and beer at home, for person consumption I might add. I believe that everyone in the household was of legal drinking age by this time, and so helping one family member to make a wine or beer was not disagreeable in the least. I should also add that after making wines and beers for a couple of years, the process became second hand and we were constantly trying new techniques and improving our methods, and final products (hic!)

On one particular weekend, my parents purchased a huge amount of bananas from a local supermarket, as the bananas were ripening quickly and were very, very cheaply priced. There were a lot of bananas, more than enough for eating, baking with, freezing and so on. And so it happened that one of my brothers hit upon the idea of making a banana beer. The yeast from a beer we’d just finished could be used for the banana beer and some experimentation was done with the other required ingredients. The beer brewed up normally and was eventually bottled.

When the beer should have matured to the proper state to allow for tasting, we started opening the odd bottle from time to time. The beer was terrible. And we had loads of it. On average, each time a beer was made it was brewed in quantities of about 22 litres. It was carbonated, had alcohol but just tasted horrible!

On one enterprising Sunday, we were enjoying the end of the weekend by sitting around, talking and having a drink. It being winter at the time and not too cold that particular day, we headed outside and starting throwing some snowballs at various objects. Boys being boys, we started competing with our target shooting, and thus the idea of a game began.

The story of William Tell involves someone having superb aim by hitting the apple off of someone’s head with an arrow. Our game involved having good aim (using snowballs, not arrows) and so we called our game William Tell. Again, boys being boys we decided to put in some sort of punishment for the loser, and idea of having the loser drink some of that awful banana beer was born.

To play the game, one player would start and choose a target and then try to hit the target with a snowball. If hit, the next player would have to hit the same target or else pay the penalty by drinking some of the banana beer. As the game continued both players consumed more and more of the beer so that over time hitting any target successfully was difficult.

The game became fun not for being skilled at hitting targets but for tormenting the other player or players by having them drink the banana beer. Oh, the faces we’d make while drinking it! Slowly, slowly, the banana beer started to disappear.

And then, somewhere down the road, after the snow had all melted and William Tell could no longer be played that winter something strange happened. When making the beer, some experimentation had occurred. A beer usually brews up to about 5-7% alcohol, but it doesn’t go much higher because the strain of yeast used for beer dies out if the alcohol is too high. A wine yeast brews up to a slightly higher percentage because wine is usually 11-14% alcohol. So it seems that while we had put in beer yeast to make the banana beer, some champagne yeast had also been added as a back-up.

We’d neglected to check the potential alcohol of the beer because we’d assumed it was going to be a beer. But, and this is serendipity, the bananas converted into a lot of sugars for the yeasts to work on, and once the beer yeast had died out, the champagne yeast kept going. Thus it seemed that the banana beer was actually a banana champagne, or sparkling wine!

The majority of the banana beer had been consumed for William Tell, but the remaining bottles of the newly named banana champagne were savoured and enjoyed at leisure, not in haste. Banana beer, you served us well. Twice! Once as a beer, and once as a champagne. Thanks for the memories.