Brew Day: Porter-Graf

Illustration by Michael Whelan
www.michaelwhelan.com

Today's brew was the second attempt at graff (or graf, or maybe graph?) ... the apple-beer as described in Stephen King's Dark Tower series.  The first batch of graff I made (Batch 0010) came out a little tart and acidic.  It was good, especially for a first attempt, but I wanted something a little darker, a little meaner, a little more Roland Deschain-esque.  Don't let the roses fool you.  He's definitely not Christian Slater in "Bed of Roses."

So I modified an extract version recipe of Gunslinger's Graff to fit the elements I could gets my hands on as well as my desire to not make it quite so stouty.

First, they called for 3.3 lbs of amber LME (liquid malt extract).  My homebrew supplier sells it in one pound increments, so I just went with 4 lbs.  I had a lot of torrified wheat left over from the previous graf so I used that instead of the chocolate wheat.  And I used 8 oz of crystal 60 instead 16 oz of the 120 since I was using fresh pressed cider rather than store bought juice.

For the most part things went well. I made the mistake of starting with only 2.25 gallons of water because after the grains retained some and some additional boiled off as steam, I was left with only about 1.3 gallons of wort to combine with the 3 gallons of apple juice.  This put it into the primary fermenter with just over 4 gallons.

The biggest misstep I took was starting too late and trying to wrap up so I could get in bed at a reasonable hour. Because I was in a hurry, I forgot to take my original gravity measurement.  But the world (or wort) has moved on, as Roland might say, so I will go with what I get.

Wort boiling on the stove.

3 gallons of raw apple juice waiting for some wort