Spicing a Graff

Going to be on the west coast pretty much all of August. When I return I wanted to try to make a spiced Graff for the fall and winter. I was hoping to use some cinnamon, cloves, all spice and possibly corriander. Probably half of the amount I would use clothes to the end of my boil (5 minutes) the other half I would probably throw in a hops bag in the secondary and let it sit for a few weeks.

I would probably age the hell out of this graff maybe a month or two in the bottles (doesn't sound long, but I have a had good results with Graff from about three weeks) so its ready for mid to later October.

What do you guys think. :rockin:

Did you do this yet?

I just made a batch of Brandon O's Graff, and since I only had a 5 gallon carboy available, I put 1 gallon of the graff in a separate 2 gallon bucket. There aren't any spices in it from the boil, but I was thinking of "dry spicing" the 1 gallon as a test batch.

Any suggestions on amounts?

I thought after 2 weeks I would just make a spice tea of cinnamon sticks, allspice, and nutmeg, then put it all into the fermenter for the final week. Very small amounts since it's only 1 gallon: maybe 1/4 of a cinnamon stick ground, 1/8 ts allspice and nutmeg.

Hop bag or muslin bag in secondary, definitely. Don't use ground spices if poss, because apparently they're a nightmare to get out afterwards!

Your standard winter spice is Nutmeg, Allspice, Cinnamon and Cloves. Cloves really come out quickly and get more prominent with ageing, so be careful. Can't see coriander being good to be honest!

I don't know how I feel about throwing corriander in a cider. I dont really associate it with a more traditional approach to spicing cider, but if you like the taste and think it works for you please let us know how it turns out. I agree about being careful with the cloves. A little can go a long way. I have used ground spices to make a spice tea that I add in secondary and find that that the spices generally fall to the bottom with the rest of the trub.

While the spices may taste extremely strong and prominent when you first bottle, with time most flavors mellow. In my experience the longer the graff or cider has aged the better it tastes.

I

grainstoglass said:

I don't know how I feel about throwing corriander in a cider. I dont really associate it with a more traditional approach to spicing cider, but if you like the taste and think it works for you please let us know how it turns out. I agree about being careful with the cloves. A little can go a long way. I have used ground spices to make a spice tea that I add in secondary and find that that the spices generally fall to the bottom with the rest of the trub.

While the spices may taste extremely strong and prominent when you first bottle, with time most flavors mellow. In my experience the longer the graff or cider has aged the better it tastes.

I

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Out of curiosity, what proportions do you use for your spice tea. This is what I plan to do for my 1 gallon test batch, as well as my second spice addition for my pumpkin ale.

For that 1 gallon test batch of Brandon O's Graff, I have the following planned:

Three weeks before bottling: Make "vanilla sugar" by splitting 1 vanilla bean and combining with some white sugar in airtight container. Let sit until bottling time.


After 2 weeks in primary: Make a 4 oz "spice tea" of the following: 1/2 a cinnamon stick (crushed), 1/8 ts freshly ground allspice, 1/8 ts freshly grated nutmeg. Steep spices (in a muslin bag) in hot water for 10 minutes. Add all the water *and* the bag of spices to the wort. Leave for final week of primary.

At Bottling: Take the appropriate amount of your vanilla sugar needed (along with all remaining pieces of vanilla bean) for priming and boil in 1 cup of water. Remove vanilla bean pieces from solution. Rack wort on top of solution and bottle as usual.

So there's my plan. Again, this is only for a one gallon test batch. The other 4 gallons are exactly as Brandon's recipe states.

Out of curiosity, why are you using this method for the vanilla? I'd think you could control its contribution better if you added it in a sack to secondary and tasted it every once in a while or made a tea out of it and added to taste (or real vanilla extract). By the way I think this should be pretty nice. Good luck.

SenorPepe said:

Out of curiosity, why are you using this method for the vanilla? I'd think you could control its contribution better if you added it in a sack to secondary and tasted it every once in a while or made a tea out of it and added to taste (or real vanilla extract). By the way I think this should be pretty nice. Good luck.

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Thanks.

Eh, I don't have any real reason other than I wanted to experiment with adding flavors to my priming sugar solutions for a very "fresh" and immediate taste/aroma. And really, I'm hoping for more of a burst of vanilla aroma from this method than an overwhelming taste, though I do want to taste it as well.

The vanilla sugar idea came from my ice cream making. It's a method of getting another layer of vanilla flavor into ice cream when making it from scratch.

The smell and flavor of vanilla bean is very different than extract, and I was hoping to capture that (which is also why I opted not to make a fresh extract with vodka).

You're probably right that adding the bean itself to the wort (in the way I'm doing the spices) might contribute the same freshness/aroma. I may give that way a shot the next time if this way doesn't work well (also, I've already made the vanilla sugar).

It may fall completely flat, but that's the beauty of a test batch. It's not too big a deal if it doesn't go well. :rockin:

onipar said:

Out of curiosity, what proportions do you use for your spice tea. This is what I plan to do for my 1 gallon test batch, as well as my second spice addition for my pumpkin ale.

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I usually make a spice tea of about 1 cup or so of water, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 2 teaspoons all spice, 1 teaspoon cloves, 1 teaspoon nutmeg. I boil the spices in water in a covered pot and leave them to steep. I usually dump the spices right into the bottom of my secondary and rack right on top of them.

grainstoglass said:

I usually make a spice tea of about 1 cup or so of water, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 2 teaspoons all spice, 1 teaspoon cloves, 1 teaspoon nutmeg. I boil the spices in water in a covered pot and leave them to steep. I usually dump the spices right into the bottom of my secondary and rack right on top of them.

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Thanks for the tips! I'll be spicing my test batch next week. Brewed my Moon Hill Pumpkin Ale today. Very excited.

It's been 2 weeks since I pitched, so I decided to check on my 1 gallon test batch. To my surprise, it fermented out pretty darn dry (1.002)! I was expecting this graff to hit more like 1.014.

I didn't check my 4 gallon batch, but could the smaller batch fermenting out so dry be due to the volume? Should I expect the 4 gallons to ferment similarly? One other thing is that my 1 gallon I let ferment warmer...

Anyway, it tasted pretty good, like an apple flavored white wine.

I made a 6 oz spice tea with half a stick cinnamon, 3 allspice berries (crushed in a mortar and pestle), to which I also added 1/4 ts fresh ground nutmeg, 1/4 ts pre-ground cinnamon, and 1/4 ts pumpkin pie spice.

I only used roughly 3/4 ts of the mix. I boiled the rest of the graff sample (couple ounces) with 4 oz water, steeped the spice mix, then poured the whole thing into my batch.

Smelled good; only time will tell. I do hope my 4 gallon batch didn't ferment out as dry.

I made a Graff & bottled half, then Spiced the other half in the bottling bucket with 1Tsp of a Cinn/clove/ginger belend (3/2/1) & then bottled the other half. & the flavor was very nice in the spiced bottles. it did have a bit of spice sediment in the bottom of the bottle but wasn't a problem.

Bottled my test batch today and got ten bottles out of the gallon. Tasted it and thought it was on it's way. I think the spice accentuated the apple flavor more, but it also seemed a bit more tart than I remember. I also remember it being more "drinkable" before spicing, but this taste *was* right out of the bucket, so I'm hoping with some bottle conditioning and carbing it'll all blend together nicely.

I did go ahead with using vanilla sugar to prime. Only time will tell if it makes a flavor impact or not.

More tasting notes to come in a few weeks, once it's carbed up.

onipar said:

I did go ahead with using vanilla sugar to prime. Only time will tell if it makes a flavor impact or not.

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How much vanilla sugar did you use to prime? Did you add it to the gallon or the bottles?

Will be curious as well to see if there is a flavor impact.

RKFM said:

How much vanilla sugar did you use to prime? Did you add it to the gallon or the bottles?

Will be curious as well to see if there is a flavor impact.

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I used .7 ounces of the sugar, added to the bottling bucket on top of which I racked the 1 gallon test batch. I remembered too late that I had wanted to give it a gentle stir, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it all mixed together well enough.

A word on the vanilla sugar: In the end, the vanilla sugar was made by cutting and splitting 1 vanilla bean, which I then mixed with 1 cup table sugar and left for 3 1/2 weeks.

I took the .7 ounces of sugar *and* the vanilla beans, added to one cup of water, and boiled. Then I let it sit to cool while I got everything ready. I strained out the beans when I poured the sugar solution into the bucket.

Not sure if there will be much flavor impact (especially with all the spice), but I'll let you know.

Guys, I am planning on doing another run of the Graff this weekend and I wanted to go for the fall spiced variety as well. Is there any reason you could not just add the spices for the last 15 minutes of the boil? I see a lot of people adding a tea at 2 wks or into a secondary, or adding the spices in a bag to the secondary. I always worry about contamination, and wondered if anyone has just added the spices at the end of the boil and how it turned out. I'm thinking cinnamon/nutmeg...but clove worries me.

As a side comment, this stuff is just so damn good plain, I'm almost afraid to add anything.

Fanoffermentation said:

Guys, I am planning on doing another run of the Graff this weekend and I wanted to go for the fall spiced variety as well. Is there any reason you could not just add the spices for the last 15 minutes of the boil? I see a lot of people adding a tea at 2 wks or into a secondary, or adding the spices in a bag to the secondary. I always worry about contamination, and wondered if anyone has just added the spices at the end of the boil and how it turned out. I'm thinking cinnamon/nutmeg...but clove worries me.

As a side comment, this stuff is just so damn good plain, I'm almost afraid to add anything.

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The only reason I went the spice tea route is because it was a 1 gallon test batch taken off of the 5 gallon boil.

I don't see any reason you can't add it to the boil. I'd do it at more like 5 mins or so though. I think if you boil cinnamon too long it can become bitter. A good idea might be to look at some of the pumpkin ale recipes and base your spice amounts on that.

Here is a follow up, any recommendations on the ratios of cinnamon:nutmeg:clove etc for use in the boil?

Just a quick update: my spiced graff has been bottled for about 3 week now. I haven't tasted it yet because there are only 10 bottles of it, and I figure it probably needs extra aging due to the spices. I'll check back in a couple more weeks.

Tasting notes:

The spiced graff has been bottled about 5 weeks. I tasted it tonight with my brother, and we both agreed the spice notes were almost non-existent (see my previous posts for the amounts I used).

I *did* just drink a Punkin' Ale before trying the graff, but the spice flavors were barely there. On the other hand, I felt the spices rounded out the flavor of the graff rather nicely. There's definitely a noticeable difference in flavor between the regular and the spiced, it's just not an up front hit of spice.

I will say that I don't taste or smell the vanilla additions at all. So if that's something you want to do, there's better ways than my method.

Overall, it's a smooth, slightly tart, apple flavored beverage with backnotes of very very subtle spice. *easy* drinking.

Also, as a side note, this batch is less carbonated than my regular batch, and I have to say, I prefer it with less bubbles.

Hope that helps.

Well I have a 4 week old 3 gallon batch Graff I spiced (15 min in the boil) with 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, and an almost nonexistent pinch of clove. In these quantities, the effect at this point is VERY mild. It's as if I can taste something different but if I did not know what was added, I'd have a hard time telling what it was. I'd likely go for a bit more of each next time. I'll tell you that at two weeks this stuff smelled very odd, but that has completely gone away. I'm having a hard time finding much that improves that core Graff recipe.

Fanoffermentation said:

It's as if I can taste something different but if I did not know what was added, I'd have a hard time telling what it was. I'd likely go for a bit more of each next time.

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That's exactly what I thought. I double checked and I put 3/4 tsp of mixed spices in as a spice tea for 1 gallon. I thought it'd be plenty, but beyond that "there's something a bit different that I can't put my finger on" taste, there isn't much going on.