“I do not brew with my kettle, those who brew with their kettle have forgotten the face of their father. I brew with my heart.” — Brewslinger’s Mantra

Long days and pleasant nights constant readers! Graf (sometimes referred to as Graff) is a fictional beverage that appears in The Dark Tower series of books by Stephen King. The series is a genre mash up of sci-fi, fantasy and western, following the adventures of “Gunslinger” Roland Deschain in a post-apocalyptic quest to find the eponymous Dark Tower.

Graf first appears in The Waste Lands, the third book in the series, home made by Aunt Talitha of River Crossing. It’s described as “dark golden” in colour, strong such that the effects of drinking it are felt immediately, and not bitter but sweet and tart “like a cider.”

Normally the source material would be the starting point for designing a recipe, but Graf differs from other fictional recipes in that it’s been inspiring homebrewers for years. Diving into old forum posts from homebrewtalk.com, from what I can tell the first Graf was brewed by a user by the name of Brandon O in 2009 as a way of adding body to an apfelwein recipe, the basis of which was adding DME (dried barley malt extract) instead of corn sugar and using a small amount of hops. This post has been influential, with several users recreating the recipe, or citing it as an inspiration for their version of a Graf.

There have even been a few commercial examples: Colorado’s New Belgium put out Graff(t)—a West Coast IPA with 10% apple juice—in 2014. Hawkes Cidery in London released ‘Graff’ Apple Pale Ale in 2018, which featured a mix of Braeburn and Bramley apples blended with a “caramelised and malty” wort, fermented with ale and wine yeasts and hopped with Amarillo and Cascade. Tom Norton at Suffolk’s Little Earth Project has been brewing beer/cider hybrids since 2015—in fact all of its beers are fermented with cider lees—but they have also released a product called Hard Graf, a barrel aged saison mixed with the juice of Golden Delicious apples to a ratio of one-third apple juice to two-thirds beer.

““Graf differs from other fictional recipes in that it’s been inspiring homebrewers for years.””

What’s astounding is that somewhere along the line the true origin of Graf has been lost. When commissioning this article Pellicle’s own Matthew Curtis [hello!—ed] referred to it as “the correct name for a beer and cider hybrid,” unaware the term was entirely fictional in origin. Speaking to Tom Newton at Little Earth Project about his Graf, although vaguely aware it had some links to Dark Tower, he was unaware it originated from fiction.

What I find somewhat unnerving about this is one of the main themes within the Dark Tower is the idea of the borders between different realities breaking down. In the series the characters spend some of their time in the post-apocalyptic world of the Gunslinger and some in the 20th Century of our reality. Graf has literally broken the boundaries between universes; it has passed over into our real world and we have forgotten it was ever fictional.

Looking at the original homebrew recipes as a starting point, I felt the recipe from Brandon O was less a fictional recreation, and more about adding body to an apfelwein. The commercial examples also strayed from the original description within The Dark Tower. With New Belgium’s Graff(t) only having 10% apple juice it would not be sweet and tart enough, and Little Earth Project’s Hard Graf spicy saison character is also at odds with the description. For my version I decided to work from scratch and try to make something as true to the books as possible.

I opted for an ABV of 8%—not crazy territory but potent enough that you’d warn a drinker that it was strong. For colour I wanted to get to around 8-10 SRM to fit the “dark golden” descriptor. It took a few attempts to pin this down as I was never sure how exactly the wort colour and the apple juice would interact, but it turns out just a bit of crystal malt is enough to get you there. It’s not a bitter drink so features a low amount of early hops but enough to counteract the sweetness from the malt. A big hit of Bramling Cross at the end of the boil adds blackberry flavour that marries really well with the apple juice. Finally I knew I wanted a 50/50 ratio of beer to apple juice—the flavour has to be cider dominant rather than beer if we’re going to be true to the source material. I’m satisfied this is as close as you can to what the Gunslinger and his ka-tet drank. In fact I’d set my watch and warrant on it.

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Recipe

Target Original Gravity (OG) — 1.070
Target Final Gravity (FG) — 1.010
Target Alcohol by Volume (ABV) — 7.8%*
Target International Bittering Units (IBU) — 36
Batch Size — 20 litres

Ingredients

3.5Kg Pale Malt
250g Crystal Malt
1Kg Vienna Malt

15g Magnum at start of boil
100g Bramling Cross five minutes before end of boil
10 Litres of Apple Juice at end of boil

Mangrove Jack’s Cider Yeast

22.3L water total (12.3L for mash, 10 litres for sparge)

Method

Mash Duration — 1 Hour
Mash Liquor Volume — 12.3 Lites
Total Grist Weight — 3.95 Kg
Liquor to Grist Ratio — 2.6 L/Kg
Mash Temperature — 65°C
Sparge Liquor Volume — 10 litres
Sparge Liquor Temperature — 75°C
Boil Duration — 1 Hour
Fermentation Temp — 18°C

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The basic concept of this recipe is first brewing a 2.5 gallon batch of beer and then adding the apple juice to top it up to 5 gallons. If you have access to apples, a scratter and an apple press you can absolutely make your own apple juice to add, if you’re like me and lack such kit however I have made many a good cider with commercially bought apple juice, make sure it’s 100% juice however and not a squash with additives. You can add the juice in the fermenter, but I added it in at the boil to speed up the wort cooling down.

If making a 2.5 gallon batch is difficult for you due to the equipment you use you can double up the quantities and make a 5 gallon batch of worth and split that across two fermenters and then add 10 litres of apple juice to each.