Would it be considered bad practice to restart apache (with graceful) every 1 / 5 / 10 minutes?
Sorry, but I don't consider that a good idea.
If you're planning on restarting Apache every X minutes, even though it may not need it, I see plenty of downside there but no upside.
If you're just checking and restarting when needed, such as with a process running which can detect when a change is needed, that might be okay.
Personally, I wouldn't even do that since I'd rather keep control over deployment changes. For example, if you wanted to get a whole lot of stuff installed during the working day ready for restart but not actually activate it till quiet time.
Of course, in a robust environment, you'd be running multiple servers so you could offline them one at a time for changes, without affecting anyone.