Style
Graff
A hybrid of cider and beer, fermented from apple juice with malt and usually hops, originating in North American homebrewing rather than in any orchard tradition.
- Family
- Fruit or flavoured
- Sweetness
- Off-dry
- Carbonation
- Sparkling
- Strength
- 4–6.5% ABV
- Serve at
- 6–10 °C
- Where
- United States
Graff has no formal definition. Competitions that accept it place it among speciality or experimental entries, and the recipe conventions attached to the word come from homebrewing communities rather than from any authority. The name is commonly said to be borrowed from a fictional apple drink in fantasy fiction, an attribution that is anecdotal.
What makes it this style
- Apple juice is the base, with malt — usually as steeped grain or extract — contributing body, colour and unfermentable sugars.
- Hops are generally added, supplying bitterness and aroma that apples cannot.
- It is fermented and packaged like a beer: carbonated, served cool, and drunk young.
- It is a homebrewing invention with no orchard tradition behind it, and its conventions come from shared recipes rather than from practice.
What varies inside the category
Every style covers a range. This is what legitimately differs between two examples that are both correctly called by this name.
- The malt-to-juice ratio, which decides whether the result reads as a cider with malt or a beer with apple.
- Hop variety and quantity, which range from a token bittering addition to a heavily aromatic one.
- Yeast, since ale and cider strains give very different results on the same wort.
- Whether the grain is steeped for colour and body only or genuinely mashed for fermentable extract.
Sensory profile
Scored as bands rather than points, because the category genuinely covers a range and a single figure would claim a precision it does not have.
| Dimension | Typical | Range | Variation |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sweetness | Dry | Some variation | |
| Acidity | Moderate | Some variation | |
| Bitterness | Moderate | Some variation | |
| Tannin | Light | Some variation | |
| Astringency | Slight | Some variation | |
| Body | Medium | Some variation | |
| Carbonation | Sparkling | Some variation | |
| Alcohol | Low | Consistent | |
| Freshness | Settled | Some variation | |
| Fruit character | Present | Some variation | |
| Phenolic character | Trace | Some variation | |
| Fermentation character | Evident | Some variation | |
| Oxidative character | None | Some variation |
What you are likely to smell and taste
Each descriptor links to what actually produces it.
About Graff
Graff belongs to a small group of drinks that exist because homebrewers had both apple juice and brewing equipment and wondered what would happen. It has no regional home, no historical lineage and no producer body defending it, and it is included here because the word circulates widely enough that readers meet it and find nothing solid written about it.
The construction addresses a real limitation. Cider from dessert apples is thin: high in acid, low in tannin, with nothing to give the palate weight. Malt supplies exactly what is missing — unfermentable dextrins for body, a little colour, and a soft cereal note — and hops supply bitterness, which in a cider would normally come from apple phenolics. The result is a drink with more structure than its base juice could produce alone.
How it tastes depends almost entirely on proportions. A small malt addition to a mostly-juice ferment gives a cider with unusual body and a herbal, hoppy top note. A larger one gives something closer to a fruit beer. Neither is more correct, and the absence of any definition means both are legitimately called graff by the people who make them.
The name’s origin is part of its character: it entered use through online homebrewing communities in the 2000s and is commonly reported to have been borrowed from a fictional apple drink in a fantasy series. That attribution is anecdotal and this record does not assert it as fact. What is clear is that the word is a community coinage rather than a term of art, which is why it appears in competition only under speciality headings.
Tasting it
What to attend to here specifically, and what is routinely misread. The second list is the more useful one.
What to look for
- A hybrid construction — cider with malt or grain — which is what the term names.
- Whether the malt reads as body or as flavour. Unfermented dextrins from the grain add weight without sweetness, which is the thing cider most lacks; malt flavour on top of apple is a different and much more assertive proposition.
- How the apple survives the addition. Between malt and hops there is a good deal competing with a fruit character that was never loud, and whether anything recognisably apple remains is the question that decides whether the hybrid worked.
What gets misread
- Treating it as an established style. It is a homebrewing term of recent origin with no legal standing.
- Assuming it is a cider legally. Adding grain can take a product out of the cider category in several markets, which changes how it must be labelled and how it is taxed — so the word on the label may not be cider even where the drink began as one.
Cold, in a glass with a bowl. The malt contributes body and the hops contribute aroma, and both behave the way they do in beer rather than the way apple does in cider.
What it is mistaken for, and how to tell
One observation per pair, chosen because it separates them. Several of these are not styles at all — a commercial term, a legal category, or a fault wearing the same description.
- Hopped cider — What is added. Hops are an aroma addition; malt is a fermentable and a body addition.
- A beer-cider blend — Whether the grain was fermented with the apple or blended afterwards.
How it is made
The methods that define or commonly produce this style.
Juice blending
Combining juices from different cultivars before fermentation so that the blend ferments as a single batch, as against fermenting separately and blending later.
Hopping
Steeping hops in cold cider to extract terpene aroma without any boiling, which gives hop character with essentially none of the bitterness that hopping contributes to beer.
Inoculated fermentation
Starting a ferment by pitching a chosen yeast culture so that one known strain, rather than the fruit’s resident population, does the work.
Yeast selection
Choosing which cultured strain to pitch, on the basis of the temperature, nitrogen, alcohol and aroma behaviour that separates one commercial yeast from another.
Priming
Adding a measured, calculable quantity of fermentable sugar at bottling so that the fermentation which follows generates a predictable volume of carbon dioxide.
Forced carbonation
Dissolving carbon dioxide into cider under pressure to a chosen level, giving complete control of the sparkle and none of the flavour a second fermentation would contribute.
What can go wrong
Faults this style is particularly exposed to, given how it is made.
Thin body
A cider with no weight or texture in the mouth, most often from over-watered pomace, low-gravity juice or a blend with nothing to give it substance.
Excessive bitterness
Bitterness that dominates the palate rather than supporting it, usually from a blend weighted too heavily towards high-tannin fruit or extracted too hard.
Excess diacetyl
A butter, butterscotch or popcorn character from diacetyl, produced by lactic acid bacteria metabolising citric acid, and by yeast under stress.
Related styles
Hopped cider
Cider dry-hopped or hopped in process, borrowing aroma and bitterness from a brewing ingredient to supply what low-tannin apples cannot.
Modern American cider
The dominant contemporary American category: cider from culinary and dessert apples, fermented clean, often carbonated and frequently flavoured, defined against the heritage sector rather than by any tradition.
Spiced cider
Cider flavoured with spices, either fermented and packaged that way or mulled and served warm, with the two practices frequently confused.
Botanical cider
Cider infused with herbs, flowers, roots or bark, a small modern category with old antecedents in the practice of flavouring fermented drinks with what was to hand.
What people ask next
Questions readers ask about the things this page mentions. Each one goes to the section that answers it rather than to a page written to receive the question.
- What yeast should i use for cider — CiderHQ does not recommend brands. The choice is between a neutral, reliable strain that lets the fruit show, an aromatic wine strain that adds its own esters, and no addition at all. Alcohol tolerance, cold tolerance and nitrogen demand are the properties worth comparing.
- Can you make cider from shop bought apple juice — Yes, provided the juice contains no preservative — check for potassium sorbate or benzoate on the label. Pasteurised juice ferments perfectly well once yeast is added, because pasteurisation removes the organisms but not the sugar.
- How is cider carbonated — Either by dissolving carbon dioxide into finished cider under pressure, or by letting a small second fermentation produce the gas inside a sealed bottle or tank. The first is faster and more repeatable; the second leaves sediment and a finer bead.
- What is priming sugar — Priming sugar is a measured dose of sugar added at bottling so that the remaining yeast produces carbon dioxide inside the sealed bottle. Too much of it is the usual cause of burst bottles.
- What does fresh-cut apple mean in a cider tasting note — The smell of a cut apple surface, produced within seconds of the fruit tissue being broken by six-carbon aldehydes released from membrane fats.
- What is modern american cider like
Where to go next
- All styles — The full range, grouped by what defines each one.
- Sweetness decoder — What the word on the label means, in the system that defines it.
- Serving — Temperature, glass and how to open it without losing half of it.
Sources
What this page rests on. Where a source is marked as registered rather than read, CiderHQ is recording that the body is authoritative on the subject without claiming to have worked through the document itself. See our evidence policy for what each state means.
BJCP Beer Style Guidelines — cider and perry categories
Beer Judge Certification Program · classification framework · retrieved 2026-08-24
Opened on 2026-08-24, and the edition matters. CiderHQ registered the 2015 cider guidelines; BJCP has since published a 2025 cider edition, and the old URL now redirects into the current guidelines index. A competition style guide is a dated framework rather than a standing definition, and citing the wrong edition of one is the same class of error as citing a superseded specification. CiderHQ treats BJCP as one competition framework among several and never as the universal cider taxonomy.
ACA · specialist organisation · retrieved 2026-08-24
Publishes a widely used US cider style framework and runs the Certified Cider Professional programme. Cited as one framework among several rather than as a universal classification.
The New Cider Maker’s Handbook: A Comprehensive Guide for Craft Producers
Claude Jolicoeur, Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013. ISBN 9781603584739 · reference work · bibliographic record verified, not opened 2026-08-25
Bibliographic record verified on 2026-08-25 against the Open Library union catalogue: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2013, ISBN 9781603584739, one edition recorded. That establishes the citation points at a real book in a stated edition, which is what a citation needs and is all it establishes. No copy was opened and nothing is quoted from it. The book itself is in print and not digitised in any open collection; where CiderHQ needs a figure from this territory it uses an accessible research source instead and says so.