Banana liqueur with a dash of academia

 

Tine Bergen

Musa Lova, the new banana liqueur, is not just a blend of banana and rum with honey or coffee. This local product also brings together a great deal of expertise from K.U.Leuven and, what’s more, provides support to African development projects.

“Leuven has not only been appointed Belgium's ‘City of Taste’ this year, it is also the city of the banana. Professor Rony Swennen’s laboratories house the largest collection of bananas in the world,” we are told by Fabian Deckers from the Improvisio brasserie, who initiated this project. “Thus, the idea of doing something with bananas started to take root. I took my concoction of rum, honey and bananas to Professor Swennen and apparently, he liked it. He then made a few suggestions to make it even tastier.”

“Taking the taste of the finished product into account, I was convinced that it would be best to use the Cavendish, which is the ordinary banana you can buy in the shops here,” Professor Swennen adds. “The other important decision we had to make concerned the ripeness scale of the bananas. We first sat down to discuss the project in March and the liqueur is now ready.”

“Over the course of the months, brewer Jan Dewachter from ’t Nieuwhuys in Hoegaarden let us taste a number of different combinations,” Fabian Deckers continues. “In fact, finding the right balance between rum, honey and banana is not particularly easy, because rum has a very strong taste. The end result is Musa Lova. Musa is the Latin name for banana and Lova stands for Lovanium (Leuven) and love: the love of Leuven’s bananas.”

“We wanted to create a new taste,” Professor Swennen emphasises. “Not just a second Pisang Ambon. We have made a banana liqueur that actually contains real bananas. Most liqueurs are made with aromas. Bananas contain an enormous number of taste molecules, which vary slightly depending on the ripeness scale. If you use aromas, you miss this entire palate.”

Besides the Musa Lova with honey, they have also developed a less strong variant with coffee. “We made a conscious choice to use regional products: Damian Coffee and honey from Leuven,” Fabian Deckers says. “To obtain the honey, we collaborated with Professor Seppe Deckers, whose bees forage in the fields of flowers around Leuven. I am also meeting with Professor Jeroen Lammertyn soon; he will be able to tell us which products we can add to Musa Lova and which we should avoid adding. He is an expert on which tastes enhance one another and which do exactly the opposite. We are already conducting experiments in the kitchen at Improvisio, with sauces and parfait. The liqueur has already been added to pralines and we have also experimented with tiramisu and banana bavarois.”

“We also consulted Professor Freddy Delvaux (Centre for Malting and Brewing Science) for advice about how long and in what kind of environment Musa Lova will keep. For example, how does it react to light? The reason we did this is that it will soon be marketed in smaller, transparent bottles.”

Moreover, the liqueur benefits various projects. “The bottles are labelled at a sheltered workshop in Herent, while the crates are made at a sheltered workshop in Tournai. Part of the profits from the coffee we use is donated to a coffee project in Uganda, while the sale of the bottles supports a development project that builds on Professor Swennen’s banana project in Kisangani in Congo.”

“In Kisangani, in the Congolese inland, one returns to the origins of the research conducted on bananas in Leuven,” Professor Swennen tells us. “The region is home to a very large diversity of banana species, which my predecessor, emeritus Professor Edmond De Langhe, discovered in the 1950’s. The cultivation of bananas has been abandoned there because the region has become unstable as a result of wars, but also because of innumerable diseases and plagues. Second only to cassava, baked bananas (also called plantain) are the population’s basic diet. Moreover, the growth of the banana plant supports the growth of many other crops, which are necessary to provide for the availability of a variety of foods, which in turn ensure that the people consume sufficient vitamins and minerals. If one removes the banana, one creates a kind of domino-effect: one by one, the majority of edible crops vanish.”

“We have started with two years of investigative research, to lay the solid foundations for a future project. Project workers go and visit the farmers in the region to find out what the problems are exactly and to collect as many different species of banana as possible, to bring to Leuven to enlarge our collection. The next step, which we will take next year, will be to develop concrete projects to be able to solve these problems. To this end, we will be collaborating with the University of Kisangani. The region is divided into nine districts and the governments of each of these districts are also involved in the project. The project is supported by many different people, which is very important.”

Jean Pierre Agbema, one of the project scientists, is currently in Leuven. He is working for Professor Dheda Djailo, who obtained his doctorate in 1992 for a project that was supervised by Professor Swennen. “This does not only concern bananas, it is about bringing people together,” Jean Pierre Agbema emphasises. “Most of the banana plants in Kisangani are infected with viruses. Leuven is in a position to supply good quality plants, so that we can grow healthy plants in Congo. There is a great deal of expertise both in Leuven and in Congo, but at the moment it is not reaching the farmers who need it. People have to learn how best to deal with the plants by listening to the radio, watching television and reading handbooks.”

“Furthermore, the population must be encouraged to make flour from the bananas. Shipping the bananas is practically impossible because of the extremely poor condition of the roads, which results in a great deal of the harvest being lost. Flour is much easier to preserve and to transport and, moreover, it serves as an ingredient in numerous other products. The techniques by which bananas can be dried and processed into flour do exist; we just need to get them to the population so they can be implemented. In fact, you cannot overestimate the importance of the banana for our region.”

More information and donations: send an e-mail to Isabel.Penne@rec.kuleuven.be

Musa Lova can be purchased at Brasserie Improvisio and the K.U.Leuven shop. More information and locations: http://www.brasserieimprovisio.be/musalova.html