How is this Gunslinger Graf going to turn out?

I decided to try my hand at JimRMaine’s Gunslinger Cranberry Graf this year. Time being short lately and my not ordering my ingredients from NB soon enough, I’m forced to take an interesting path. I pressed my apples this weekend and decided to go with 3 gallons of cider instead of 4 gallons since my biggest carboy is 6 gallons. I opted to go with S-04 for the yeast. I added 2 tsp of yeast nutrient and pitched the rehydrated yeast in the 3 gallons of cider. My malts for this beer will not be arriving until Wednesday (ordered them last Sunday, but that’s what you get with the $7.95 S&H). I won’t be able to have time to mash, brew and add the wort component until 2 weekends from now. Then after that, I should be able to get back on the right path with this brew. I do wander if the yeast will be possibly too adapted to eating up the types of sugars in the cider and might not ferment the maltose as well when it does finally get to eat it, but considering how many fruit beers I have made where I started with wort and added fruit or cider afterward, I’m thinking it might still work. What do you all think?

The yeast will be fine. At this point I would rack the cider into the wort and then add a little more of the slurry. You could also ferment separately and blend the two to taste.

Good point. Those lees are copious and light making it difficult to rack off. It would make sense to get the cider off of the lees when I make the wort. Thank you.

Hmmm. I have done the opposite- start the beer part fermenting a couple days before adding the cider, but that was because the cider was sorbated and I wanted to overwhelm it ( it worked great by the way).
But I think your bass ackward way will work to, because there will be a ton of active yeast in the mix. They will just say ‘Thank you for the extra sugars, now we have more work to do’.
By the way, the past couple years I have used WY1007, because I was in the middle of my Fall Altbier series when I got the cider. This year I got 4G of cider when I was visiting CT last month and used S-04. It took it from 1.070 to 1.008 in 8 days. Used an extract plus grains partial mash this year, just because. I added the cranberries yesterday, will leave it for a week or so before cold crashing, hitting it with gelatin and racking off the lees for a couple weeks of cold conditioning. I saved out 1 G of straight cider and fermented that with Cote des Blanc. Racked that off the lees yesterday. I’m in no rush on that one.

Thanks, Jim! I have the carboy in a cold water bath at 55 degrees for a sweeter and cleaner flavor, and the S-04 is still fermenting it with 1/4" of krauzen and decent activity in the airlock. I’m going to let the temperature rise to low to mid 60’s in preparation for the wort addition. I’ll let you know how it turns out. Do you crush the cranberries before adding them? Freeze and thaw? Pasteurize? Thanks again.

They were frozen when I got them, so I let them thaw and whacked them with a rubber mallet. Then refroze. Took them out of the freezer 1 day before adding them, let them thaw again and gave the uncrushed ones another whack. I have never bothered to pasteurize any of my fruit additions, and have (so far) never had any problems.
Good luck. And let me know what you think of it. I like it, a lot of my friends and family like it, but I’ve never tried to get an opinion from an unbiased knowledgeable taster.

I bottled this brew 10 days ago and decided due to lack of time that I would let it bottle condition slowly at low 60’s until I have time to pasteurize it. 7 days into it, it was only about half as carbonated as I’d like it to be. Last night, it was about 75%, so I think I’ll pasteurize it this coming weekend. Anyway, wow, what a complexity of flavors! So much is going on with the cider, malts, honey, cranberries and hops. And let’s not forget the warmth of the alcohol since there’s plenty of that in there. I really like it. I’m really curious as to if the flavors will change and meld with age. I’ll have to hide a few in the basement to be rediscovered in the future. Thanks @jimrmaine for posting the recipe.

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I didn’t bother to pasteurize this year’s batch.

That’s really interesting because I was wondering if there really was enough sugar in one can of FAJ to create bottle bombs. Good to know. Thank you.

They’ve been in the bottles for 3 weeks now without explosions. 2 weeks at temp and one chilled. Decent amount of carbonation, but nothing excessive. This batch’s OG was a little higher than usual at 1.070, and finished 1 point lower than last years at 1.012. It did sit at cold conditioning for over a month before bottling.