The Apple Graf Beer Project

Graf to the Future - The Next Step in Southey Brewing Co.’s Community Driven Beer Projects

Do you like beer? Yes, then keep reading. Do you like cider? Yes, then keep reading. Do you like Penge? Yes, then keep reading. Do you like reading? Yes, then keep reading.

🍎 What Is A Graf?

A lot of people will have no clue what a Graf is, and neither did I until around a little over a year ago. Even I can’t quite remember how I discovered the style, but I’m a brewer and I’m from Somerset, so it’s no major leap to imagine myself googling cider/beer hybrid recipes! And a graf is exactly that; it’s apple juice and beer wort (the sugary liquid extracted from grain to make beer), fermented together in the same tank to create a unique and fascinating beer style!

Its history is somewhat vague too. The term was seemingly coined by Stephen King for his Dark Tower series, where there is mention of an apple based beer that can be weak or eye-wateringly strong. But then the next link on Google says it dates back to 7000 BC, so I think your guess is as good as mine as to Graf’s origin story!

With all this lack of history comes a lack of available recipes to scan over and understand. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve never seen a Graf for sale in any other brewery or taproom, so had no real idea on what it was meant to taste like. This just made the whole project much more exciting to me, time to step into the unknown…

🍎 2023 - In the Beginning was the Graf 

We first tried brewing this beer style a little over a year ago, using shop bought apple juice, and blending that with a small runoff of our Sunny Afternoon, using a 50/50 split of juice and wort. We then added a clean ale yeast that wouldn’t impart any added flavour to the beer. We did this as we wanted the juice to really shine through, and didn’t want anything else masking the flavour profile. The result was pretty great; It was quite sweet, and had a pleasing appley aroma and initial taste, but had a beer-like mouthfeel and finish. There was only one keg to sell, so if you can remember trying this in our taproom, you are one of a lucky few!

From this initial success, the idea to create a community Graf using donated apples from the surrounding area was born. It was around the time last year we were asking for hop donations for our yearly community fresh hop beer, so we just expanded our offer and asked for unwanted apples too, from local gardens/allotments etc. After all the donations were received, an expensive commercial juicer was purchased, and an afternoon was spent juicing, we were left with around 30 litres of the local-est, freshest cloudiest apple juice you can imagine! Who knows how many apples, and of what variety went into it, but the end result was a lovely super tart apple juice, much less sweet than what you would buy from the shop. This meant that we decided to do roughly a 30/70 split of juice/wort for this brew, as if we’d have gone 50/50 again we feel the finished product would’ve been too tart and overpowering. 

The end result was our community Graf beer year 1, Scrumptious, and it was a real success! It was less sweet than the initial test batch, as expected, but it had a proper traditional scrumpy aroma to it, and again had that satisfying beer-y finish. We ended up with only 3 kegs total, 1 of these went into cans and the other two were served at the taproom. Another lucky few made it down to try it the weekend it went on, but it didn’t stick around long!

🍎 2024 - Return of the Graf

Now onto this year, year 2! It’s no secret that we really love our local community, so we put out a call for more apples this year, and the people of Penge really stepped up! We took donations for the whole month of September, juicing and freezing as we went, and ended up with around 150 litres of juice! Wow, thank you Penge!

With last year's batch, and the initial test batch working so well, we didn’t want to change too much for this year. We decided to make two Graf’s, one with a runoff of our Field of Gold, and another with a runoff from our Penge Pilsner. Both of these beers have a fairly basic pale malt base, and don’t contain any overpowering hop profile to detract from the flavour of the apples. We kept the yeast the same in each batch, and the ratios of juice the same in each batch, sticking with around 30/70 juice/wort.

This has left us with two distinctly different beers, at different strengths, and as we were freezing the juice as we went, we ended up with different varieties of apples in each beer too. We’ve even got some juice leftover still sitting in the freezer that we might have some extra special plans for, but you’ll have to wait for Christmas to find out about that….

It’s so exciting to put this beer out into the world! To release something that feels completely unique, experimental, fun, community driven, and also bloody delicious is really special! 

Be sure to head to the taproom on November 1st for our launch night! And with a big thanks to the Penge community, we have a bit more to go round this year (around 5 kegs of each Graf), so it should stick around for a couple of weeks at least. But don’t dilly dally, or you’ll have to wait until next year!