BeerBorg

Saw this recipe on homebrewtalk and decided to give it a whirl:

http://www.homebrewtalk.com/f81/graff-m ... er-117117/


Ingredients:

8 oz. 120
1 oz. torrified wheat
1 lb light DME
1 lb amber DME
4 gallons apple juice
.25 oz. centennial hops
1 packet Safale 05


I did a 30 minute steep on the grains in 1 gallons of water. Pulled the grain and added the DME, brought to a boil, tossed in the hops for a 30 minute boil. Cooled the wort down and added to a 6.5 gallon bucket with the 4 gallons of apple juice. Added the rehydrated yeast and moved to cellar. Made for a quick and simple brewday.

Looking forward to trying this, the hydro sample tasted pretty good, malty slightly spicy apple juice. The OG was 1.060.

HOPEFULLY I'll get ot try out my newly built mash tun this weekend too!!

Took a gravity sample last night -down to 1.005 so 7.22%. Damn tasty beverage too. Can't really taste the alcohol and its still sweet enough (to me) that this could be a killer. This is gonna be awesome carbed. Still had a pretty healthy layer of krausen on top so I'm gonna let her sit for probably another 1 1/2 weeks or so before bottling.

Bottled this AM (3/30/13).

Even though you're the only one updating this, others are following it. I'm looking forward to how this turns out.
I had the HBT link in my favorites before you had posted it. I had found it and thought it looked intriguing, but hadn't taken the plunge yet. Now I'm looking to put this in rotation and trying it.

Thanks for checking in! I'll post again once I try it carbed, probably about 3 weeks or so.

The sample at bottling tasted great, though I will say that the 05 yeast really tore through it. I will probably try Nottingham the next go around, see if it finishes a little higher.

The thing about apple juice is that it is damn near 100% fermentable. So even though a beer yeast says it normally attenuates 75% it will likely go way higher with fruit juice. I had S-04 take a 1.080 og batch down to an fg of .997 the first time I made pure cider because I was expecting it to attenuate as described on the label. I am not sure of any brewing software that will work well with graff so I think finding the correct ratio of fermentables to get the correct balance of residual sweetness and flavor is a bit more complicated.

I gave up on cider because I couldn't make a cider that didn't taste bad but I keep getting tempted by graff just to see if I can make it work.

I'm thinking you should look into a yeast that is more suitable to cider than beer...

Choices could include:

Wyeast 4766
White Labs WLP775
Lavin EC-1118

Just thinkin'...