Graff (Malty, slightly hopped cider)

What do you back sweeten with?

 

Hello all, new to the scene I live in Central MA so raw cider is plentiful here so I only use that. Made a few batches of dry apflewine and loved it but i wanted to try something diferent. Just brewed a batch if this but I'm not good at following recipes. Just wanted to know how you guys think this will turn out?

5gallons of raw sweet cider from the mill down the street
.5lb of torified wheat
2lbs amber DME
1cup real maple syrup
1oz fuggle hops (4.6 AA)
Nottingham ale yeast

I forgot the crystal 60/120l and the LHBS was closed so I left it out.

Will it be too bitter with this much hops?
How will the absence if crystal 60l affect the head retention?
is .5 lb of wheat way too much?

 

Gonna be a wild ride, should be interesting results to post about later. People talk about torrified wheat going crazy at 2 oz. Crystal is for residual sweetness, without it there will be remaining sweetness. Usual hops is a quarter of what you uses, so obviously yours will be more bitter. Which should compound the lack of crystal.

But I bet whatever you get will be drinkable, if not good. And if it's too bitter, you could always backsweeten.

 

So I just bought 4 gallons of Honeycrisp cider (all natural, no preservatives,100% juice and pasteurized). So I plan on making it this weekend sometime after I go to the lhbs. I was wondering how I would make this more towards the sweeter/malty side? I am not against a dry cider, just happen to like the sweeter ones.

 

Thanks for the input, I realized I had forgotten the crystal too late to get it and had no room in the fridge for the raw cider so I just went for it. I have read that maple can leave some residual sweetness any chance I helped my case with that?

 

Also what do you mean about the torified wheat "going crazy" ?

 

CrotchRocket S. Grant,
"going crazy" = super foamy head retention

2 lbs of amber extract will leave a little residual sweetness. I've not heard that about maple syrup. No matter what you made beer. Smile.

Tubbster85, use more caramel malt, backsweeten, halt fermentation, try Ffarg. There are lots of ways to make a sweeter cider. They just won't be Graff. Graff is good. Try it. Try Ffarg. Try making a simple sweet cider there are several good recipes here.

https://www.google.com/url?q=http:/...ds-cse&usg=AFQjCNEsDeSlIxCZ62D08ScV-CyfCDH5dA

https://www.google.com/url?q=http:/...ds-cse&usg=AFQjCNEVuBEtJ04HrduCx-iDizOPjZhz1g

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f81/5-day-sweet-country-cider-265986/

 

Haha! "CrotchRocket S.Grant" took me a minute... For the record my 09 Buell Ulysses xb12xt is more if an adventure tourer and thus is named the Latin name of the hero in Homers Odyssey not the Civil war General that tried to kick all the Jews out if Tennessee.
But I digress...
Thanks for clearing up the wheat question, as for the maple perhaps I confused maple having some "unfermentables" with residual sweetness are the two not the same?
Obviously I have a lot to learn perhaps I should have brewed a few more extract beers before trying graff but I've been reading the dark tower series and I'd rather brew something I can't just buy a better version of.

 

Count me as another satisfied customer.. er brewer of this recipe. I love it and am not a huge cider fan but made it at the urging of friends and family to make something other than crazy hoppy beer. It was so successful that I felt it needed a label and have been giving it out as gifts. Sadly I only brewed 2 gallons.

I am about to make another batch but was thinking of adding fresh guava (we have a bunch of guavas around) but have no idea how to go about that. Ideas?

 

Just tried it after 1week in the primary. Had low expectations due to my lack of ability to follow directions, but I was pleasantly surprised! It's not really that bitter at all, just enough to balance out the sweet and sour apple flavor it rounded it out nicely! Just hope not too much more sweetness goes away as it is just about as dry as I like and I'd assume the bitterness will stay the same and would then be out if balance...

 

So I'm not sure what the deal is with my cider but here I am at 3 1/2 weeks and it looks like it's still fermenting. Any thoughts? What's should I do next?

 

Take a couple of hydrometer readings a couple of days apart, if its stable then I would rack from under it. I've racked under something that looked like that and it turned out fine.

 

I've made this a few times now. Thought I'd post the results of my latest batch. I found the original recipe to be a little too tart for my taste so I have been working to find a way to balance the sharp apple tartness and cider flavor. I think that Nottingham dries this out a little too much. I tried T-58 to see if that would add some complexity but did not care for the results. Decided to try S-04 since it finishes a little higher while adding subtle fruity esters. This batch has been carbed in bottles for three weeks, then a week in the fridge before tasting.

- Steep 0.5 lbs Special B and 0.5 lbs Crystal 60L in 2.5 gallons of RO bottle water at 154 deg F for 30 minutes.
-Add 4 lbs XLDME and bring to a boil
-Add 1oz Ahtanum 5.2%AA @15 minutes
-Cool with 3 gallons of refrigerated apple juice.
-Note: Although it will ferment, vitamin C contributes to the sharp tartness of your finished product. Avoid using juice with vitamin C if you can.
-Pitch 1 pack S-04 into fermenter

OG 1.056
Fermented for 3.5 weeka at 68 F
FG 1.010 ~5.9% ABV
Aroma: Apples, malt, some bread
Taste: Much smoother than original recipe. Apple flavor is not as sharp and blends subtly with the unfermented malt sugar. The esters from S-04 add complexity to the apple flavor. Mouth feel is smooth, sparkling, light, crisp. Reminds me of a cold Honey Crisp apple.

I am very pleased with the results of this batch. I feel that the extra malt brings up the final residual sweetness enough so the drink is less like a sour apple tart bomb. At 1.010 it is still dry and crisp enough to be refreshing and easy to drink. Thanks again to BrandonO for posting the original recipe and giving me the inspiration.

 

Has anyone tried this recipe, but skipping the malt extract? I like the idea with the specialty malt and the hops, but i would like to keep the ABV down to, or under, 5 %.

 

If you make this without the malt extract it will finish VERY dry and VERY tart. The malt extract provides some unfermentables so the finish product is more balanced. If you read a little in the cider threads this is one of the difficulties in making a cider that is drinkable quickly. Apple juice/cider by itself is simply too fermentable to "set it and forget it" if you want to drink your finished product in a matter of weeks. If you want a lower ABV, try substituting a gallon of water for a gallon of juice.

 

But wont i get a bunch of unfermantable sugars from steeping the specialty grains? I always thought you got more unfermantables from steeping grain than from malt extract?

Good toughts on substituting with water. I didn't even think of that.

 

After seeing the northern brewer episode on this I had to try it. I made my way over to this thread and got he recipe and it's bubbling away nicely after 8 hours. Should be interesting. The only thing I changed is I subbed out the light DME and used amber and dark instead.

 

Your specialty grains contribute very little to the sugar in your wort. Check out the recipe calculator at tastybrew. It really helped me to understand what ingredients contribute to color, gravity, and bitterness.
Www.tastybrew.com

 

Okay I see, I will check out the calculator.

Thanks alot!

 

Going to make this next week, very excited. I cant believe I just read 186 pages

 

Can't wait to get this into a keg. I used flaked barley instead of torrified wheat and the hydro sample tasted great at two weeks

 

Just made a batch of this and the wort (or whatever its called) tastes absolutely amazing. I used 2oz of malted white wheat since the store didn't have torrified wheat. I ended up using .25oz of Styrian Goldings since I wasn't looking for any noticeable hop flavor. Threw in 1/4tsp of Wyeast Yeast Nutrient too. Didn't do juice and instead used 4 gallons of Musselman's Apple Cider (only 5 bucks per gallon at Walmart).

Can't wait for this one! Thanks Brandon O!!

 

would love to hear how this turns out as I have some extra flaked barley and was thinking of substituting that for the torrified wheat as well.

 

I just kegged/bottled my batch that I started on October 6th.
Followed the OP's recipe to the T, using Musselman,s. A sample going into the keg tasted pretty good! A bit dry. I'll sample the keg in a week. The bottles will age for some months for comparison.

 

So I made a batch in a 5gal Poland springs bottle as a primary, it was still bubbling once every 15sec at the one week mark but I racked it into a glass Carboy so as not to leach from the plastic. No bubbling returned. Us this normal? I then bottled it at the 2week point priming with 1/2 tablespoon sugar per 12oz bottle. No carb at all 1week later. Did I kill my yeast by racking too early?

 

Probably not dead. Probably an inconsistently sugared bottle. Try another one in a few days.

Did you take any gravity readings?

 

First Graff today

10 gal batch

2.5 gal Apple Juice
8 lbs Crisp Pale malt
.75 lb C60
.25 lb C40
1 lb White Wheat
US-05

Splitting this with a friend. Wort was 1048 after sparge. His 2 gallons of wort will be boiled with 1 oz citra @45min. My 5 gallons I'm splitting. 2.5 gallons with Sorachi Ace for 45 min. The other with UK Fuggles for 60 min. Boiling wort now with Sorachi Ace smells amazing can't wait for this to be done!!

 

So after about a week in the keg, the graff is nice and carbed, but it sure is tart. The only difference I made in the recipe was I used 1lb amber and 1lb dark dme. I used 100% natural pasteurized cider and US-05. I know it's still way too early, but if it stays tart, what could I do to sweeten it a bit? This is my first cider, so I don't know much about it. I was thinking maybe adding some frozen apple juice concentrate?? It does have a nice body and slight maltiness which I like.

 

In the 2 months it has taken me to get through this thread I have tried a bunch of variations on this recipe in little 1 gal batches to see what I liked the best, all of which have come out pretty good.

My favorite so far is a batch where I doubled up the c120 and used a dark DME with about 3 peaches cut up and thrown in the fermentation vessel. For the juice I used apple juice concentrate and cranberry concentrate (which is strange because I really can't taste the cranberry at all) Used cascade hops and Notty yeast. Tried the same recipe with 1 lb frozen strawberry and that one is still pretty tart after being bottled for about 2 weeks, if its anything like the other ciders I have done with strawberry it will mellow out and be pretty spectacular with some more age. Both of these I let ferment out completely then used concentrated apple juice to provide the carb. I think I used about 1/3 cup per gallon.

I also tried a pumpkin version with 1 can pumpkin and about 1/2 a small container of pumpkin pie spice in 1 gallon. Added 1 cup brown sugar and used Amber DME with half whole foods cider and half concentrate. Really liked this until I put some cheap vanilla extract in there which gave it a bit of a funky flavor (still drinkable just not as good) I might forgo the pumpkin in the recipe as it took up a lot of space in the carboy and I don't think it added a whole lot of flavor. With the pumpkin I did two gallons and compared S04 to Notty. Couldn't tell a whole lot of a difference in flavor however the S04 seemed to ferment faster, and when racked slowed fermentation quite a bit more then the Nottty. When I bottled them (stopped around 1.02-1.01) I had to bottle pasteurize the Notty in about 2 days, the S04 took about a week to carb up appropriately.

My latest experiment is using the second runnings of some Heffe grains with about 3 cans of AJ concentrate in a gallon and weistephaner yeast with Haulatrau hops. Samples taste more like beer then graff so this will be interesting. I am thinking it will be more like a Heffe with a bit of apple in it then graff.

All in all this seems to be a pretty forgiving concept as everything I have thrown at it has turned out pretty good. As I said the peach seems to be a GREAT pairing to this and when I scale up to a 5 gal (in the next few weeks, want to see how I like the weistephaner yeast finished) that will definitely be in the mix as well as a good mix of dark specialty grains.

To the post above-give it some time, the tartness will subside. I have sweetened with apple juice concentrate, honey, brown sugar etc. I have heard of people using unfermentable sugars (lactose, splenda etc) or just putting some unfermented cider in there but age does wonders mellowing this out.

 

So if I do sweeten it with apple juice concentrate, wouldn't I have to worry about it re fermenting? I have my graff in the keg at 40F. Would it be cold enough to stop it from fermenting further?

 

When I put bottles in the fridge as opposed to pasteurizing them I have never had any issues with them fermenting more. I have only tried this method with ale yeasts which cold crash pretty easily, I'm not sure about champagne, and I would definitely be a bit worried with this method if you used a lager yeast.

Edit: re-read your post, you should be fine with the ale yeast

 

Hey guys I made up a Graff using some left over grains and is doing the double krausen..like a saison. It doesn't look contaminated or anything I'm just wondering if this is normal for graff.

2 Gallons:
0.2lbs Special Roast
0.4lbs Flaked Wheat
1.5gal Apple Juice
0.8lbs DME...Light Golden
0.2oz Cascade Hops
US-05 Pitched at 75 degrees
Fermeting at 68 degrees

Has this happened to anyone else?

 

Yes, this is typical. I had a 4" thick layer of Krausen for three weeks. After the Krausen fell I had little bits of floaters. (Protein from wheat?)
I'm drinking the first pint from a keg that has been two weeks on gas. Tastes great with a nice apple tart/sweet finish. I will definatly brew this one again.

 

I'm brewing right now (in boil phase), trying to make a sweet cherry graff.

3 gal batch

Steeped 155-160 20 minutes:
1 gallon of water
1lb crystal 20L
1 oz torrified wheat

Boil start:
0.25oz Hallertau
1 lb pilsen DME
1 lb lactose

Fermenter start:
1 gallon pasteurized apple juice
1 gallon pasteurized cherry juice
Safale S-04

Edit: OG at a massive 1.082

 

Mine came out at 8.3% following this recipe. Anyone else get that high?

 

This unfortunately has turned out terrible for me. I'm not sure what went wrong. SG of 1.05, FG of 1.008 and it tastes really bad. I'm thinking the cider I used is the problem. I have another batch of a different type of cider that turned out similar. Tasteless, thin, tart, and overall not pleasant. I will not be using Musselman's cider ever again.

I might try backsweetening. Any ideas on how to save this one? Will it get better over time?

 

The huge Krausen is pretty normal on mine, I leaned this time and held 2 gallons of the apple juice back until it died down, then added it when I knew it wouldn't blow the airlock off (3-4 days into ferment)

That Cherry cider sounds like it could be pretty good, could also be super tart. Keep us updated

Soilworker: That tartness will subside, I think carbonation makes it much better/gives it more body and since you are talking about back-sweetening I'm guessing it hasn't had a chance to carb up yet.

I would throw a can or two of AJ concentrate in there if you want to back sweeten. in any case let it carb up, pasteurize, and then let it sit for a month. I bet it will significantly improve.

 

I'll definitely keep you updated. Pitched at 72, fermentation visible in under 6 hours, steady at 65-68 right now using a wet towel and a window for cooling. After 1 1/2 days I have a nice krausen, reddish-pink with brown flakes, only a couple of inches and though it's had a blow off tube on it from day 1 it may not need it, but I'll find out in the next day or so. I used black cherry juice and so the wort is quite dark reddish black.

I will backsweeten the heck out of it if it's tart, either with lactose or concentrate + pasteurisation, but the entire pound of crystal and lactose in a 3 gallon (really more like 2.75) batch was meant to prevent the need for it.

 

For what it is worth!

Just finished off a batch of tart cherry cider based on the regular graff recipe but once fermentation has completed I racked into my keg over 16 oz tart cherry concentrate and 1/2 cup slpenda to back sweeten. It was excellent!
My first attempt at the cherry apple cider was good but I put the cherry in the fermenter and there was not a lot of cherry left after fermenting, much better the second time by adding straight to the keg with the splenda and then directly into the kegerator to stop any more fermentation. I am already brewing another batch, you can get the tart cherry juice concentrate at most any health food store, it is in a bottle right off the shelf not frozen.

 

I would note that if you want to backsweeten with an absolute minimum of impact, there is a product called EZ-Sweetz, which is pure sucralose dissolved in water at an extremely high concentration level. Powdered splenda is sucralose sprayed onto a bed of dextrose and maltodextrin, both of which can have a slight impact and dextrose can of course effect carbonation levels.

I'll probably end up using some on that cherry graff. It fermented fast and furious but after 3 days it quieted down to next to nothing already. The krausen never even got close to out of control, it was very light in general.