Rhubarb Graff Recipe suggestions?

mutedog · 01-18-2012, 06:21 PM

So I was reading through Brandon O's Graff thread and I got inspired to make something similar but using a base of rhubarb (+water & sugar) instead of apple juice. I've made a few rhubarb wines in the past and they've turned out great so I figured why not try something like a graff with rhubarb?

Here's the recipe I threw together:

10lbs Chopped Frozen Rhubarb
3lbs Weyermann CaraRed
3lbs Table Sugar (Sucrose)
1lb American Crystal 120L
1lb Briess Bavarian Wheat DME
3oz Torrified Wheat
1oz Calcium Carbonate
1Tbsp Pectic Enzyme
1oz Cascade Hops

Wyeast Belgian Witbier (3944)

My proposed process will be to dump the frozen rhubarb into the fermentor add the calcium carbonate and pectic enzyme and then pour the table sugar over it and leave it to thaw and extract the juices from the rhubarb.

After about a day, when the Rhubarb is thawed I'll add 3 gallons of water and stir everything up to dissolve the sugars.

I'll brew up 2 gallons of wort with the DME and steeping the Carared, Crystal 120, and torrified wheat while the water gets up to boiling. I'll add the hops and boil for 15 minutes.

Cool the wort and add it to the Rhubarb must and pitch yeast.

Not sure yet but I'll probably filter out the rhubarb and press it after a week in the fermentor and then transfer to secondary depending on how the ferment goes.

I'm not necessarily sold on anything in the grain bill or the wheat DME. (I was going for a reddish color with the carared but that's not that important to me.)
I'm not going to change the hop variety (they're homegrown) but I could easily change the amount or the boil time.
Not sold on the yeast either.

Does anyone have any suggestions, thoughts, or comments for this recipe?

Thanks in advance.

Matt

**MrOrange** · 01-18-2012, 07:24 PM

Matt, I have no clue how to go about this but i would love to hear how it turns out when/if you make it. Let me know what recipe you end up going with.

mutedog · 01-18-2012, 09:29 PM

I'm definitely going to make some sort of rhubarb based graff, my plant produces so much I have to do something with it.

I'll update this thread accordingly when I do make this, but I'd sure love some feedback on my proposed recipe.

mutedog · 03-13-2012, 07:26 PM

I modified the recipe a bit and brewed this past saturday. Here's what I ended up doing:

10 lbs Rhubarb
2 lbs Table sugar
3 lbs CaraRed
1 lb Crystal 120
1 lb 2-row
1 lb wheat

1oz Cascade Hops for 15 minutes
8 oz ginger syrup at 10 minutes

1 tbsp calcium carbonate
1 tbsp pectinase

Wyeast Belgian Ardennes (3522)

Put the rhubarb in the fermentor with the sugar, calcium carbonate, and pectinase to thaw in the morning

Did a fairly large minimash in the evening with all the grain in ~2 gallons of water. That went pretty well but it was a bit large for the small pot I was using. Regardless I seemed to get pretty good efficiency.

After the boil I strained out the hops and poured the hot wort over the top of the still partially frozen rhubarb, this worked pretty well to cool the wort down. Then I filled the fermentor with additional water to about the 5.25 gallon line. The temperature was around 72F so I pitched the yeast and sealed the fermentor. OG 1.048

Fermentation took off and it's been going pretty well thus far. I plan on removing most of the rhubarb this coming weekend with a sanitized strainer and pressing it. I may or may not transfer the beer/cider/graff/whatever to a secondary, I guess it depends on how far long fermentation has progressed.

**TravisF** · 04-10-2012, 01:59 AM

Please keep us posted on progress. I'm interested in hearing how this goes.

mutedog · 04-10-2012, 02:40 PM

I pressed the rhubarb as planned and left the beer in the primary, it had fermented fairly quickly and a lot further down than I (or hopville) had anticipated; it was at around 1.008 at pressing. It looks like the ardennes yeast ate pretty much all of the sugar except for the stuff from the Crystal 120. I'm going to adjust the recipe for future batches to include additional crystal malt (I know carared is crystal but apparently it's not crystal enough).

Tasting at pressing I was unimpressed, it didn't taste bad or anything but it also didn't taste good, it was a really sort of meh. I know for other threads on graff that age is very important to the beer's flavor so I held out some small hope.

I left it in primary for another week, then I transferred it to a keg. FG was 1.006 for an ABV of 5.6% it was tasting slightly better after the week but I was still unimpressed.

After 2 weeks in the keg the flavor has improved drastically, the flavors have really come out and can be picked out when you taste it as opposed to before when it was just a muddy mess. It is a sour beer (how could it not be?) with a slight fruitiness and some malt in the background, it tastes a lot like a sour brown ale, if you like sour beers you will probably like this. I'm quite pleased with how this has come out especially after being fairly concerned with the initial tastes at pressing/transfer.

As I mentioned above, I would adjust the recipe to include a bit more darker crystal malt to leave some additional residual sweetness and boost the malt flavor a bit more. I can't taste the ginger at all so I'd just leave that out and possibly increase the hops. Obviously I'll be refining the recipe over time but I'd call this first try a success.