Coriander Seed help

King of the Swill said:

I just received my order from AHB (my clone of a Sunset Wheat) and have a question on how to add the coriander seed. My last kit came with coriander in a powder-like form. This one has the coriander as whole seeds. Do I crush these with a rolling pin or use them whole? Also, if I want to add orange peel can I just use the peel from a fresh orange or do you recommend I use the dried up store bought stuff? Thanks!

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Jekster said:

From a cooks perspective I would recommend the fresh orange zest. You'll get much more aroma out of the zest than you would any dried counter part. Just make sure that you only get the yellow or orange zest and don't grate into the white rind. That stuff is extremely bitter and won't lend good characters to your brew.

Also, Jamil recommends using fresh Zest in his podcast.

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King of the Swill said:

Do I just take an orange an use a cheese grater to grate it? For a 5 gallon batch (2 gal boil) how much do you recommend? I am trying to make a Belgian Wit style brew that I don't want to be too heavy on the spices.

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sleepystevenson said:

I did a five gallon wiezen batch not too long ago with corriander and orange peel. I ran the corriander through my grain mill which worked great. Used half an oz. For the orange, I used a hand held kitchen kitchen grater. I used all the zest from one whole orange. Just stood over the brewpot and grated it directly in. I added both for the last 15 mins of the boil. Seemed like just the right amount of both the corriander and the orange to me in the finished product.

One thing I did notice, is the orange flavor became more pronounced over time in the bottle.

Another thing that makes a world of difference in wheat beers is the yeast strain. I really prefered the hefewiezen from white labs.

Good luck!

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