my ridiculously expensive celis clone is terrible...

how expensive? well after some bad advice from a LHBS i dumped the first pitch-black wort on the compost pile, sans the spices. had already slapped the yeast pack, so that went on the pile too. the 3 # of raw clover honey in the wort - ditto! i still had all of the good spices: coriander, sweet and bitter orange peel, etc. so i just started over the next day. other LHBS didn't have the exact LME so i ended up with subbing something a little less light and ending up with a wort that was no where near the color of a celis, but at this point i've already spent about $70. i see it through, ferment it for a few weeks and bottle it. opened a two week old bottle last night and it is way over-spiced. i found the recipe on some other forum and it called for 1 oz of coriander and it tastes really vegetal and green, more like cilantro than coriander, if you can imagine. so what now? will strong spices like this mellow with age or am i doomed to miserably drink nearly 50 bottles of uncelis unwhite clone? and as i understand it, wits are better drank as young beers, rather than undergoing a long aging time. any advice for the next time?

i'm pretty sad... this was to be the special beer to get me through these ludicrously hot texas summers...

I guess it's too late now, but I know the guy at my LHBS said cut the coriander down to .5oz because after it's crushed it's fairly potent.

What was your exact recipe? I could post extract wit that I brew last month - it was about $40, but turned out really well. I think I have the recipe on my home computer.

Coriander seems to get stronger over time.

Don't toss the yeast out next time, just store in a sanitized jar and make a starter if it sits a while

The coriander will only get more bite-y as time goes on. I made a kit wit and left the coriander in the fermenter. It's undrinkable as a beer so I use it for recipes that call for beer. It has a good spice for pretty much any style of cooking luckily!

Re: the coriander.

The vegetal character you talk about is the result of using Mexican coriander (the more common variety) instead of Indian. Your Indian grocer will have the right variety. Mexican coriander is smaller and spherical; Indian coriander is slightly larger and shaped like a rugby ball.

(North American coriander looks like what Indians call a football; Indian coriander is shaped like what North Americans call a football. Coincidence?)

landis said:

I guess it's too late now, but I know the guy at my LHBS said cut the coriander down to .5oz because after it's crushed it's fairly potent.

What was your exact recipe? I could post extract wit that I brew last month - it was about $40, but turned out really well. I think I have the recipe on my home computer.

Click to expand...

I'd love to have your recipe. Can you get that soft wheaten mouth feel from an extract? I'm sipping this one now and like someone else mentioned, it'll probably be nice to cook with, but this isn't a pleasurable drinking beer. Maybe I'll wash my hair with it.

Here's what I did:

4 oz. flaked wheat
4 oz belgium aromatic malt
4 lbs alexanders pale malt syrup (i think all he had was golden)
2.33 lb wheat dme
3/4 oz willamette hops

1/2 oz willamette hops
1 oz bitter orange peel
1 oz crushed coriander

1/4 oz cascade hops

white labs belgian wit yeast

Wow - its looks like our recipes are very similar, but mine was more basic. Now that I'm looking at it I remember I didn't even use steeping grains.

8lb Alexanders Wheat Malt Extract
1oz Willamette Hop Pellets
1/2 oz Crushed Coriander
1oz Bitter Orange Peel
Wyeast #3944 Belgian Witbier Yeast

60 minute boil

Boiled 4oz of the extract for the full 60 minutes, and added the other 4 oz after 40 minutes (20 minutes left).

The Willamette boiled for the full 60 minutes.
Crushed Coriander and Bitter Orange Peel were added at the 50 minute mark (10 minutes left).

I kept it at 70 degrees for two weeks and then bottled. I had the first beer one week into bottling and by 2 weeks it was delicious.


It doesn't have the exact same mouth feel as Celis or other witbiers, but I find the beer highly enjoyable (about 4.7% ABV with a FG of 1.016). Fairly sweet with citrusy tones, and a pleasure to drink on these warm summer nights.

I was just re-reading your first post - wow - that first recipe with the honey and black wart must have been off. Sorry to hear about the bad experience with the LHBS - hopefully the new place will be more helpful. If not I know the guys (and gals) on this site have been a great help to me, so I'm sure they can work to perfect a recipe.

I know the common tactic in using coriander is to crush it, but it is extremely potent when that is done. I tried brewing my wit without crushing it. Its exactly the same as the recipe above, (using Mt. Hood instead of Willamette) so we'll see how it turns out.

I used 1oz of Indian spicerack coriander, crushed in a mortar/pestle. The coriander was right on. The 1oz orange peel, however, was a FAIL and is nearly undetectable.