Herb Wild Wit?

Hi. I'm getting ready to brew a wit using:

Light DME + Extra Light DME to the proper color and gravity
B Saaz to the right IBU (mid-alpha 7% Alpha so no need for bittering and aroma seperately)
Orange and Corriander of course!
Some sort of herb!
Wild Yeast (My fav!)

I just brewed a recipe very, very similar to this but without the herb and the wild yeast I managed to culture is super bretty and it was just crying out for some sort of herb in addition to the hops in there to balance out the brettyness. I was thinking thyme, but I'm looking for opinions. What do you think would work and enchance the beer????

brett can impart a range of characters to beer, maybe if you can describe what this stuff is like someone can better match an herb to it. is the beer also sour? it seems probable if you left it to wild yeast you got some lactic bugs in there too.

It's actually not very sour at all, and each batch I make gets less sour (I re-use the same culture from the bottom of one of the bottles from the previous batch each time). The lacto bugs are probably slowly dying off.

Anyway, as best I can describe it, it's a sort of a musty, leathery, catty, cardboardy flavor? Bizzarely enough, they don't taste like off flavors. Also, I'm sure it's not oxidation because I've made other beers in the same equipment the same way and they came out fine. I like the way it tastes, it just needs something to balance it out.

I could be way off but maybe lemon balm? it has a slightly bitter lemony flavor and a lemony scent, I would add it towards the end of the boil. maybe some variety of basil some have a natural sweetness and fennel / anise like flavor. paradise seeds have a peppery flavor, but you may get enough of that from the coriander. you can google brewing herbs and get an enormous list to choose from.

k1v1116 said:

I could be way off but maybe lemon balm? it has a slightly bitter lemony flavor and a lemony scent, I would add it towards the end of the boil. maybe some variety of basil some have a natural sweetness and fennel / anise like flavor. paradise seeds have a peppery flavor, but you may get enough of that from the coriander. you can google brewing herbs and get an enormous list to choose from.

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I know, that's the problem - too many to choose from!! What do you think about lemon grass? Lemon Balm sounds good too.

Ive never brewed anything but tea with lemon grass, but I think it was very mild and tea like with a subtle lemon flavor so you might need a lot to get any flavor in your beer.

slightly off topic, I just brewed a beer from the second runnings of a porter with chinook hops and juniper berries. the chinook and juniper go together beautifully, it made a great session/summer beer. so just throw in whatever sounds good and take a few notes in case its really good.

Offhand, chamomile is wonderful in a wit.

But if you want to be weird, go for dill, green cardamom, or green peppercorns.