Attn. 888 RIS Brewers! Input Needed

I will be a married man this January and was thinking about brewing a beer on the weekend of the wedding to celebrate.

I want to brew an epic beer that SWMBO and i would drink a year from January on our anniversary and for anniversaries to come!

SWMBO loves Mackeson's Sweet Stout as well as Old Rasputin--and thats when it hit me! I want to make the 888 RIS boarderline milk stout-esque. I also want to add cherries to the secondary.

888 Recipe:

Batch Size (Gal): 5.00 Wort Size (Gal): 5.00
Total Grain (Lbs): 17.40
Anticipated OG: 1.08851 Plato: 21.230
Anticipated SRM: 57.6
Anticipated IBU: 82.5
Brewhouse Efficiency: 70 %
Wort Boil Time: 60 Minutes

13.33 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row)
1.25 lbs. Roasted Barley
1.00 lbs. Special B Malt
0.33 lbs. Crystal 120L
0.33 lbs. Crystal 75L
0.33 lbs. CaraMunich
0.33 lbs. Chocolate
0.50 lbs. Pale Chocolate

1.50 oz. Horizon (12.69%AA) 60 min.
1.00 oz. Goldings (4.75%AA) 10 min.
1.50 oz. Goldings (4.75%AA) 0 min.

WYeast 1056 Amercan Ale/WLP001/US-05/Nottingham

So here goes the questions:

1. According to Ray Daniels' DGB I am told to use 10 lbs. of cherries for 5 gallons. Does this seem right? I will add them to secondary.
2. Since I will be adding cherries, would the flame-out golding addition "interfere" with the cherry?
3. Should I add lactose or would Splenda work as well?
4. 60 min. boil?

Any other thoughts would be cool.

Cheers!

Dave

1. no idea
2. no
3. If you are making a milk stout, use lactose. Splenda tastes weird.
4. Depending on how much sparge water you collect, you may have to boil longer to get down to 5 gal.

1. 1-2lbs per gallon is the usual, so determine how strong you want the cherries
2. interfere, no.... Get lost in, yes
3.As big as an RIS is the lactose may make it too chewy
4.I would gather at least 7 gals to get down to 5 so 90 would probably be needed

EDIT
Congrats, 12 years for me and enjoy every minute of it

And that weekend will be kinda busy, maybe the week before would be a better idea, IMHO

cool, thanks for the replies so far Ed and Jim.

I boil 2 gallons off in a 60 min. boil so i might plan on collecting 8.5-9 gallons to account for boil-off, trub loss, and racking loss from 10 lbs of cherries.

Would there be any benefit, or disadvantage, to taking out the 2 fuggles additions to maybe let the cherry do its thing?

EDIT: I just now realized that the recipe recommends using 1.57 qts./lb of grain. Why? Why not 1.25?