What the heck is a GRAF?! [Brewing a Beer/Cider Hybrid]

[Music] part cider part beer but fully delicious a graft might be a drink you've never heard of but i'm here to tell you you have to try it out it's a hybrid beverage that brings the flavors from two different worlds and melts them perfectly together without any added complication to the brew day today we're pulling from the pages of a fantasy novel to make this truly unique hybrid drink i'm trent mucho and this is the brew show let's make a graph [Music] inspiration for your latest brew can come from many places but it's not often that it comes from a modern book series the term graph originates from the stephen king book series the dark tower in which a hard apple cider beer hybrid is consumed interestingly there isn't much more description beyond that it can be tart and be lower or higher in alcohol content while beer cider hybrids i'm sure were around prior to king's novel he definitely put it on the map for homebrewers to experiment with and with such a vague description there's a lot of room to play you can go with a strong abv dark grains or light grains use various apple juices and even try out different yeasts and get equally varying results there's a few good recipes out there on the internet but when i started to think about what a good graph looked like to me i immediately thought of a saison i prefer dry ciders anyway and saisons tend to be quite dry plus the fruity essers would work well to blend these ingredients together nicely and boy was i right this came out crisp dry and popping with apple almost champagne-like flavors using cascade as the hop it added a citrusy grapefruit like character and it really brightens the cider flavor but it also has a slight malty background that makes this drink a little more complex and unique the finish is slightly tart but it doesn't linger too long at all it's extremely easy to drink almost dangerously so and as you'll see it's really not any harder than making a normal beer all you need is a little bit of apple juice let me show you how it's done so for this recipe i made a 50 50 beer cider hybrid but you could totally experiment with the ratio again there's no rules or guidelines to this it's a fictional drink we're bringing to life this will be a two gallon total recipe so you need to make one gallon of wart first start by heating up one gallon of water to about 156 degrees as mentioned you can go a million ways with this beer base but i'm keeping it pretty light today once the water is heated i milled the grains and then add them to a mesh bag the grains i used were 86 pilsner for a clean crisp background and 14 munich mall for just a touch of bready complexity i'll mash that at 152 degrees for 30 minutes this bag was a tad small so it just takes some stirring and poking around to get it motivated and fully saturated if you wanted you could also simplify this recipe even more and just use dme or dry malt extract while that was mashing the weather started to change quite a bit dark clouds began to circle above i didn't know if i was summoning some portal to the other world or if it was just going to be that one day in l.a where it rains either way i quickly pulled the grains and squeezed as much water out of the bag as i could i then sparged with a half gallon of water to help rinse the grains and bring up the total pre-boil volume since the skies were getting darker by the minute i opted for a quick 20 minute boil and right at the top of the boil i added the only hop addition a third of an ounce of cascade for about 30 ibus i thought cascade would add a nice floral citrus touch without overpowering the cider and beer towards the end of the boil with about five minutes left i decided to add in some yeast nutrients this is completely optional but i figured in ciders and in light grain bills i like to use them to help the yeast perform at their best so it wouldn't hurt here i used 10 grams of dap and 3 grams of firmado these can easily be found at any homebrew store or online at that same moment the winds picked up and it started to rain so now i was really in a hurry to wrap up so i called down the boil and turned off the burner checking the time this was only a little over an hour for the brew day might be my fastest yet now let's talk cider we'll need one gallon any store-bought juice would work fine here just remember the golden rule it can't have any preservatives like sorbates benzoates or sulfites these will inhibit yeast growth and it won't ferment like we want it to but today i splurged a bit and got some fresh pressed cider from a local orchard fall is a great time to get out there and get some fresh juice or apples and make this recipe but the same rules apply make sure it doesn't have any preservatives this one says lightly pasteurized and i confirmed that it was only slightly heat pasteurized so we're good to go here an easy way to cool the wart down to yeast pitch temp is to stick the cider in the fridge the day before and then when you reach the end of the boil add the cider in first and then dump the ward in it should get you close to the right sound here i'm actually doing the opposite and it definitely helps to have the stainless fermenter with the hot pork but if you're using plastic i recommend cooling the wort slightly before doing this multi-plastic graft probably won't taste too great a quick note on the gravity it's a good idea to check both wart and cider gravities to give you an idea of what the blended gravity will be but you can totally just blend them and then check for this recipe i aim for a 1.050 original gravity which happens to be the same as the cider gravity so not much change there back inside safe from the rain and with the wart juice combo cooled down to 70 degrees fahrenheit i added in the yeast i used omega oyl 026 french saison i dumped it in gave it a good mix with a sanitized spoon to incorporate some oxygen then close it up covering the bung with some sanitized aluminum foil seasonings can be a bit finicky when it comes to pressure during fermentation even with an airlock cesium yeast can have the tendency to stall and not fully ferment the foil will ensure co2 can escape without too much pressure buildup i set it and forget it for one week at 67 degrees fahrenheit after one week fermentation was done and i took a final gravity reading which was 1.010 that means this graph comes in at about 5.3 percent abv from there i kegged it up i also decided to add in 10 milliliters of biofine clear just to help with clarity and then added pressure since this has some champagne-like characteristics i dialed up the pressure to about 15 psi for some extra fizz and within a few days it was ready to drink [Music] i absolutely love how this came out i'm not sure why i'm so surprised considering i love cider and beer by themselves so of course a hybrid would be fantastic this one is almost wine like but with an easy drinkability like a table saison the fruity apple flavor comes through and it's backed by the floral citrus notes from the cascade there's just a touch of breadiness from that malt but more than anything i think it adds body to the drink then at the end it's slightly tart and a dry finish on the palette washing away until the next sip i think what i love most about a graph is how easy of a brew day it was going in you think it's complicated but really adding juice to beer is all there is to it and the fact that you can customize this to any beer style you want at any ratio makes me definitely want to try and experiment more with grass if you have any good ideas let me know what style of beer you think would make a great graph in the comments thanks so much for watching i really encourage you to try this one out you won't regret it cheers and happy brewing [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you

Channel: TheBruSho

Views: 8,448

Keywords: graf, graff, graf recipe, graff recipe, the dark tower, the dark tower graf, beer cider hybrid, cider beer hybrid, beer and cider, homebrewing, graf home brew, home brew graf, home brew graf recipe, Stephen King graf, saison, saison graf, omega french saison, hard cider, hard cider recipe, hard cider beer, hard cider beer recipe, home brew hard cider, brewing a graf, beer/cider hybrid, homebrewed graf, gunslinger graf

Id: wryHPxsjlGo

Length: 7min 49sec (469 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 14 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Poltergeist8606]

There's a recipe for a Tooter fish popkin here: http://www.geekychef.com/2009/01/tooter-fish-popkin.html?m=0