I said graff, not giraffe.

This one is a personal creation of mine. (im fairly sure the grain bill is the same, i lost my original brew notes) brew the beer portion batch as you would, and try to shoot for a batch volume of 3-3.5 gal.

mash can be hard in the anvil for this due to the small water volume and the abundant deadspace, do your best.

Apple prep is best if you can do a combination of freezing and blending. wash your apples extremely well, and the give them a decent chop, everything touching them starsan'd. freeze til solid, and then blend with cider just until you can pour it into boil.

In the primary, dump the wort and then top up to around 6 gallons with the rest of the apple cider.

Ferment with the nottingham, and here's the thing...let it get a little warm. it can creep up to the height of the temp range. helps with fruit esters imo, when fermentation slows around 10-14 days, rack again onto another 5lbs of prepped apple, this time a sweet variety.
toss in your spices, soaked in just a smidge of dark rum to sterilize.

expect to have more losses every transfer than usual. a lot of apples.

I suggest a filter of some sort on the end of your siphon, apple loves to plug it, an either finer blend on the apples or coarser blend on the apples can help with that. thin slices also work really well in this tbh.

after 2 weeks in secondary, taste regulary until spice is to where you like, but usually 2 weeks is perfect.

Keg it, making sure to filter any apple bits out, and let it sit in your keezer for a couple months.

Enjoy :D


I think this is almost perfectly well rounded, and perfectly captures a fall walk. I remember cracking the keg with my girlfriend at the time and it was damn near the best thing i ever drank.