Rochefort 8 Clone with Simple Grain Bill

I know there is an awesome recipe by Herman Holtrop but after heavily researching the actual recipe I wanted to try and make something closer to how they are doing it (aka leaving out the carafa). It's for 5.1 gallons. Any opinions?

Grain Bill:
Belgian Pilsen Malt 10 lbs 65.4%
CaraMunich Malt II 1 lbs 6.00%
Cara-vienne Malt 1 lbs 6.00%
Flaked Wheat 1 lbs 6.36%
Special B Malt 0.5 lbs 2.60%

Boil Additions:
Dark Belgian Syrup 1.5 lbs @ 10 minutes (13.63% of fermentables)
Coriander 0.25 oz @ 10 minutes

Hops:
Styrtian Goldings 1.00 oz @ 60 mins
Hallertau 0.25 oz @ 30 mins
Hallertau 0.25 oz @ 5 mins

Yeast:
Wyeast 1762 Belgian Abbey Ale II 2 Packs using a 1 Liter Starter

Stats:
OG 1.078
IBU 21.6
SRM 55.3


Mash Schedule:
Protein Rest: 3 Gallons to get 122F for 30 minutes
Saccrification Rest: 4 Gallons to get 153F for 60 minutes
Mashout: 1 Gallons to get 170 for 5 minutes
Vorlauf & Drain Mash Tun
Sparge: 1 Gallons to get 168 for 5 minutes

More than 20% cara-malt seems like too much to me, it should be a pretty dry beer. You'll get a lot of color/flavor from the dark candi syrup (although IIRC Rochefort uses the granulated soft candi sugar). Otherwise it looks like a fine recipe to me.

Oldsock said:

More than 20% cara-malt seems like too much to me, it should be a pretty dry beer. You'll get a lot of color/flavor from the dark candi syrup (although IIRC Rochefort uses the granulated soft candi sugar). Otherwise it looks like a fine recipe to me.

Click to expand...

Good call man, I was hoping someone would address that as I was worried but unsure. I edited it down to around 12% total cara and increased to pils up to compensate for the lost gravity. 12% would be good, you think? Thanks for your input man!

Looks better, although probably still more caramel malt (Special B is just a dark cara malt) than I would put into a recipe. That said it seems in line with other recipes I've seen for their beers.