Spices in an American Wheat beer?

I'm thinking about doing an American Wheat beer but think that some combination of spices would be good.  The only problem is that I"m not sure which combination?  Any suggestions for spices in this style of beer?

I unintentionally made a very simple Amer Wheat with Rye by forgetting to add the 8 ounces of character grains I had crushed.  It was pale, wheat, rye and 36 IBUs. 

The spicy rye held up and stood out more as the wheat faded.  Grapefruit and/or citrus zest would probably be nice.  Sort of wit-like, but without the Wit yeast phenolics?

Coriander and Citrus go well together. Go easy on the coriander, it has tendency to sneak up on you. I make this for SWMBO, and she says its the best beer she has ever had (Her words not mine). Never thought I would get SWMBO to drink beer!

Cheers
Preston

I appreciate the help guys.  Does lemon and orange zest with grains of paradise and coriander sounds good together or might that be a bit much? 

Wildrover said:

I appreciate the help guys.  Does lemon and orange zest with grains of paradise and coriander sounds good together or might that be a bit much?   

Click to expand...

And suddenly you're making a Belgian Wit!

BTW, you'll want to put them in a bag so you don't clog your flow!!!!  I learned the hard way  :-[

Henway said:

Wildrover said:

I appreciate the help guys.  Does lemon and orange zest with grains of paradise and coriander sounds good together or might that be a bit much?   

Click to expand...

And suddenly you're making a Belgian Wit!

BTW, you'll want to put them in a bag so you don't clog your flow!!!!  I learned the hard way  :-[

Click to expand...

Henway,

you may or may not be right about that.  I'm not sure where you draw the line between an American Wheat and a Belgium Wit (So long as its good beer who really cares?)  But just for the sake of argument, when looking at the Sam Adams website they have two seasonal beers that I've been looking at to help inspire me for this recipe.  Their version of a Belgium Wit which is described as having two row pale malt, wheat and munich malts.  These same three grains are used in Jamil's book to make his American Wheat.  Then if you scroll down on the Sam page to the summer Ale, which is described as an American Wheat, no grain bill is given but the lemon zest and grains of paradise are listed.  I'm sure when it comes to Sam Adams they probably take some liberties when it comes to style and marketing but still, the American Wheat and Belgium Wit don't seem all that different, at least not at the base level.

Of course, I have seen mentioned many times that the citrus and coriander are musts in belgium wheats and thats not what I'm looking for.  Maybe I'll stick to the grains of paradise and all spice with some citrus zest?  Belgium or American, does that sound like a good mix?   

I would say it is the Belgian Wit yeast, high ratio of unmalted wheat, and the spices that define a wit.  If you take away two of those (yeast and wheat) and instead use 1056 or 1010 with some American 2-row, plus the same spicing, you'll get a clean yeast character and straighter grain character, spiced to taste. 

I used fresh citrus zest in both a wit and that Amer wheat, and it fades relatively quickly, and the coriander (wit) lasted longer. 

Just decided to tell you guys how well it went.  I'm very pleased with how it turned out.  We came up with a pretty crazy spice bill.  Most of it was based on what Sam Adams puts on their website for their white ale.  Though they don't give any sort of volumes, just tell whats in it so I had my wife read the section of Mosher's book that dealt with spices and had her come up with the amounts.  I'm horrible at that sort of thing and shes a good cook so I figured she was my best option and her quick glance at Mosher gave her enough of a background to come up with something good.

The one thing I would say is that the Anise probably overpowers everything else.  That's not necessarily bad but noticeable, next time I might throttle back a little on that but it in no way takes away from how good I think the beer is. 

I'm also proud of my yeast selection which was the California Ale.  I realize this might go against conventional wisdom but I wanted the spices to provide the spice not the esters produced from some of these Hefe or other Wheat yeast that are out there.  I wanted a nice clean yeast to let the spices do the flavoring.  This is the first time I've ever made this sort of executive decision regarding yeast selection before and given that the beer turned out really good I'm going to run with it.  I normally just go with whatever someone suggests or a close substitute.  So anyway, I've attched the recipe, any comments or questions are welcome

You left out the kitchen sink on that one... LOL, Interesting recipe tho. You are one brave man, that's for sure!

Cheers
Preston