Experimental Beer Slim's Graham Cracker Ale 2.0

Brewed on Saturday! Airlock bubbling away rapidly within 12 hours of pitching 2 packs of rehydrated s04! Its going to be a long 3-4 months, but I'll update when it's drinking time. Thanks for the recipe Slim, I'm quite excited for this one.

Would Nottingham yeast be ok in this?

justineaton said:

Would Nottingham yeast be ok in this?

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Sure. IMO you should keep the fermentation temp at 65 until it starts slowing down to keep it clean. Notti can get phenolic at the upper end of it's range. As fermentation starts slowing down you can let it warm up to 68 to finish out and clean up.

Sounds good, I just bought a temp control for my beer fridge so I will wait to brew it until I get that set up

What category would this be? I'm gonna be brewing this Saturday as my first all grain brew.



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Specialty category.

Thanks. I've never used vanilla beans, I have them soaking in vodka now, do I dump just the vodka or vodka and the beans for the second week in primary?


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ajd said:

Thanks. I've never used vanilla beans, I have them soaking in vodka now, do I dump just the vodka or vodka and the beans for the second week in primary?


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I usually use the lid of my steeping container to keep the beans in when I dump the vodka (now vanilla extract), but it doesn't matter if you dump the entire thing in. The beans have had most of their essence extracted by the vodka, so they aren't much use anymore, but they aren't going to hurt anything either.

Do you really get about 33 gravity points from the graham crackers? Putting this into software without the graham crackers, or any sugar to account for them) the OG comes in at 1.064. It seems high because your adding 28.8 oz of graham crackers, 16oz of plain sugar adds 10 gravity points, with that said it would appear that you're getting more fermentables from graham crackers that sugar.

I followed the recipe exactly and my OG was 1.067


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Has anybody tried this with graham cracker extract? I'd like to try this but don't really want to deal with the mess of 2 boxes worth of graham cracker mush in my kettle or fermenter.

Used Graham cracker extract in a different beer, the taste was horrible.

Making this now and I went and messed up for my second beer in a row I messed up. I tossed all 2 oz of hops in for 60min boil fml.
I had them separated and everything left to room for a min and the wife combined the hops to clean the dish without thinking I keep going with my brew enjoying the smell of this one... Dumped the hops in and turned to find my next addition to realize what had happen


Btw the graham crackers completely desolve in the mash just like if you were eating on in milk and dropped it in for a 45 min with super hot milk lol


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I just brewed this today and everything went great. One thing I am concerned with is that after I transferred the wort to my fermenter there was a scummy film on the top. I saw some other posts from people with the same problem but it was determined they used different graham crackers or chocolate. I used all the exact ingredients. Anyway, I skimmed as much of the scum off I could.

Anyone that has brewed this beer and had a scummy film on the top, how did it turn out? Anything I should do after it is done fermenting?

ragefather said:

I just brewed this today and everything went great. One thing I am concerned with is that after I transferred the wort to my fermenter there was a scummy film on the top. I saw some other posts from people with the same problem but it was determined they used different graham crackers or chocolate. I used all the exact ingredients. Anyway, I skimmed as much of the scum off I could.

Anyone that has brewed this beer and had a scummy film on the top, how did it turn out? Anything I should do after it is done fermenting?

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The same thing happened to my batch. Worst Beer EVER!. I don't know what is in the Graham crackers but it sure doesn't play well in beer.

I used Honey made graham crackers.

Eww well yah if you houses all extract it will be bad! Have you tried the graham cracker extract and vanilla bean extract the. The real thing??

Sock said:

The same thing happened to my batch. Worst Beer EVER!. I don't know what is in the Graham crackers but it sure doesn't play well in beer.

I used Honey made graham crackers.

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I used honey maid as well. I'm hoping skimming it will help. Did you bottle and it was still horrible? Fingers crossed this pulls through.

ragefather said:

I used honey maid as well. I'm hoping skimming it will help. Did you bottle and it was still horrible? Fingers crossed this pulls through.

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I kegged it and racked the beer out from under the oil slick, trying my best to leave it behind.

Welp I left my in primary for total of four weeks now. Going to move into the keg and see what happens

Sock said:

The same thing happened to my batch. Worst Beer EVER!. I don't know what is in the Graham crackers but it sure doesn't play well in beer.

I used Honey made graham crackers.

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Interesting. Did you mix the graham crackers into the mash? I put them on top of the grain bed and recirculated through them for ~50 minutes. Maybe this let the grain bed filter out this film compound?

I crumbled up the Graham crackers and added them to my mash since I do BIAB I stir my mash as well as recurculate

I assume it's the fat from the baker's chocolate. I recently kegged this and and had the same layer on top. We will see how this turns out, it's not carbonated yet, but my samples from the fermenter weren't promising. Tasted kind of hot and smelled kind of begiany. We will see.

Can't wait to brew this cheers and thanks for recipe

I scaled the batch down to 3gal and did BIAB, mashing in my brewpot in my oven with a temp probe(worked fantastic.)

I was a bit worried putting it into the fermentor as it smelled a bit bitter like burnt chocolate. Also, I got the oil like scum on top too. I used the drain on my pot to transfer to fermentor, so I left the oil slick behind. I attributed that to the bakers chocolate. I let it sit in the fermentor for 3.5 weeks and kegged it tonight. Smells very boozy, but taste wasn't at all. ABV came out to 5.8%. Taste was nice. I left the top layer behind when racking to keg to try to remove any more of the oil. I'll be letting it sit for a few more weeks, but I'm much more encouraged now. After that burnt chocolate smell, I was thinking I might have to dump the batch, but it seems to have cleaned up nicely.

Thanks for the recipe.

So what is the avg abv??? I see it all over the place slim says well over 10% others around 5-7???!

Slim, thanks for the recipe. My mom gave me a recipe for fruitcake years ago, made from graham crackers. I have had the idea in my head to make a fruitcake beer for a while now....just didn't know how the graham cracker thing was going to work.
Well, I'm designing the recipe now. Thanks again Slim. While not brewing your beer, it did help provide information for mine. Cheers!

It's pretty much impossible for me to get honey Graham's whe I love (50$ for a four pack, which is the only quanity you can buy them in on Amazon) but I can get graham flour, you think it would work to just put the ingredients that I would use in graham crackers into the beer?

Nomofett said:

It's pretty much impossible for me to get honey Graham's whe I love (50$ for a four pack, which is the only quanity you can buy them in on Amazon) but I can get graham flour, you think it would work to just put the ingredients that I would use in graham crackers into the beer?

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I bet you could find a recipe for graham crackers easily enough and just add the important bits in the right amounts. It might actually be better since you won't need to add the oils. Here are the ingredients in Honey Maid graham crackers:

UNBLEACHED ENRICHED FLOUR (WHEAT FLOUR, NIACIN, REDUCED IRON, THIAMINE MONONITRATE {VITAMIN B1}, RIBOFLAVIN {VITAMIN B2}, FOLIC ACID), GRAHAM FLOUR (WHOLE GRAIN WHEAT FLOUR), SUGAR, SOYBEAN OIL, HONEY, LEAVENING (BAKING SODA AND/OR CALCIUM PHOSPHATE), SALT, SOY LECITHIN, ARTIFICIAL FLAVOR.

Wheat flour, graham flour, sugar, and honey are the stand outs to me. The "natural flavors" is probably vanilla, and with some research you might be able to find out if there are others.

I'll be brewing a batch of this on Sunday, but just to be doubly sure, these are the graham crackers I want, correct?

Hank_Scorpio said:

I'll be brewing a batch of this on Sunday, but just to be doubly sure, these are the graham crackers I want, correct?

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That's exactly what I used.

Setesh said:

That's exactly what I used.

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Awesome, thanks!

Thanks for putting together and sharing this recipe, Slim. We had perfect brewing weather yesterday, and I really enjoyed getting a batch of this brewed. The wort smelled and tasted fantastic.

Here's my big ol' bag of grains draining just after I got the burner going again:


My OG ended up at 1.084, which seems to be a bit higher than most in this thread were getting. I use a BIAB set up and have always gotten pretty high efficiency, which I think is due to running my grains through the mill twice and squeezing the hell out of the bag. I ended up transferring exactly 8 gallons to my buckets, so it seems like all of my other calculations and measurements were pretty spot on.

Now to be patient and wait and wait and wait...

Quick question for the more experienced here. I have a feeling its going to be a RDWHAHB situation, but it never hurts to get a second opinion

It's been two weeks since brewing and I just went to add my vanilla to the beer. I figured while the lid was off that I'd take a quick gravity reading and taste a sample (can't bottle until week 4, so I delayed adding my vanilla by a week so that it'd still only sit in the beer for two weeks). Both the hydrometer reading and taste of the sample lead me to believe that the yeast never finished the job. I got a reading of 1.030 (OG was 1.084), and the tiny bit I tasted had a lot of green apple (acetaldehyde, yes?) flavor.

I rehydrated my dry yeast in 95 degree water and then let it cool to 60, added oxygen to the wort via oxygen wand, pitched the yeast when the wort was at 62 degrees, and had my temp control set for 63, so I'm not quite sure why my yeast would be struggling.

Is the best approach at this point to leave it alone and bottle as usual in another couple of weeks? Or, should I raise the temp of the ferm chamber up to 70 or so (already raised it to 67 a few days ago) to try to rouse the yeast?

THIS IM SURE is an absolutely absurd question.... BUT has anyone thought of the idea of throwing some marshmallows into the boil!? What would that do!? Or marshmallow extract somehow. Idk. All I can think of with this beer is s'mores.

peejaynj said:

THIS IM SURE is an absolutely absurd question.... BUT has anyone thought of the idea of throwing some marshmallows into the boil!? What would that do!? Or marshmallow extract somehow. Idk. All I can think of with this beer is s'mores.

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It's all sugar, I would bet it would mostly ferment out and not leave much flavor if any.

castillo556 said:

It's all sugar, I would bet it would mostly ferment out and not leave much flavor if any.

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That's what I was figuring. Maybe that's what the vanilla does is bring out that sense of marshmallow? I love the idea of this and definitely going to do a small batch biab experiment next week. (No marshmallows don't worry!)

I soaked the vanilla beans in marshmallow vodka for one of the batches I did. That one came out pretty tasty.

SupervisingChildren said:

I soaked the vanilla beans in marshmallow vodka for one of the batches I did. That one came out pretty tasty.

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Yes! Genius!

Going to brew this this week. Just put a delicious witbier into the primary and figured I'd make another while I'm on a roll.

QUESTION ON THE GRAHAMS. I see a lot of people keep talking about putting these into the boil (I see some people are even putting them into the primary...what a mess!)....the RIGHT way to do this is to put them into my mash as if they were one of the grains right!?

peejaynj said:

Going to brew this this week. Just put a delicious witbier into the primary and figured I'd make another while I'm on a roll.

QUESTION ON THE GRAHAMS. I see a lot of people keep talking about putting these into the boil (I see some people are even putting them into the primary...what a mess!)....the RIGHT way to do this is to put them into my mash as if they were one of the grains right!?

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Yes, putting them in the mash works great. I suggest putting them on top of the mash that way you don't have any run off / sparge problems. I also suggest a thinner mash than usual. Just stir them up with the top third of the mash but leave the filter bed alone. A full volume mash or BIAB would also work well since you wouldn't have to sparge at all.