Can I get some input on an India Black Ale recipe?

I'm looking to brew my first India Black Ale this weekend and need some advice on the recipe, mainly the grain bill.. Here's what I have:

Batch size 5.25 Gal
OG: 1.062
FG: 1.009
SRM: 23
IBU: 99
Est ABV 6.9%

9lbs 2-row
10oz Corn Sugar
8oz Munich 10L
8oz Crystal 80L
8oz Victory
4oz English Chocolate
4oz English Black Malt (added to the last 10 mins of the mash)

1oz Summit 60 mins
1oz Willamette 20 mins
1oz Cascade 15 mins
1oz Willamette 10 mins
1oz Cascade 5 mins
1oz Willamette Flameout
1oz Cascade Flameout
1oz Willamette Dry hop 10 days
1oz Cascade Dry hop 10 days

1 packet S-05

My main concern is the grain bill is too "busy" and might create a muddling of flavors and take away from the hop profile. At the same time I want it to be dark with the flavors of the dark malts but obviously not overpowering. I have no access to any of the Carafas that are popular in this beer. What kind of flavor can I expect from adding the Black Malt to the end of the mash? Could I possibly up the Black Malt and maybe drop the Victory completely without getting too much roast flavor? Any and all input is welcome.

personally i would ditch the munich and victory, then just up 2 row. make the sugar 1 lb and add more crystal till it was around 10%. from what i have seen as far as recipes they look a lot like this. if you steep after the boil it will help limit the roast flavor

12 lbs Rahr Pale Malt 2 row (3.5 SRM) Grain 1 80.0 %
1 lbs 8.0 oz Caramel Malt - 80L (Cargill) (80.0 SRM) Grain 2 10.0 %
4.0 oz Chocolate Malt Pale (Thomas Fawcett) (215.0 SRM) Grain 3 1.7 %

steeped after boil or during end of mash
1 lbs Carafa II or black malt (412.0 SRM) Grain 10 6.7 %
4.0 oz Special Roast (Briess) (50.0 SRM) Grain 11 1.7 %

That much chocolate and black malt will give you a definite flavor of roast in the beer. I only use 8 ounces of black malt in my stout, and it's definitely roasty. I'd probably go with carafa III special (dehusked) instead of black malt.

- Pull the munich and both the english malts, those aren't the right flavors
- Add 16 ozs of debittered black for color, 4 ozs of chocolate malt for flavor, and 2 ozs of chocolate or midnight wheat for both flavor and head retention
- Victory is fine, I use it in many of my IPAs, although I haven't tried it in a black IPA yet, may not be able to taste it because of the roastiness factor
- Your IBUs are a bit high, I'd cut them down to 60-65, that high IBU combined with dark malts might lead the palate to think about tannin extraction from the malts
- Willamette isn't a good hop for IPAs, replace with Amarillo or something along those lines (I use a blend of Amarillo, Cascade, Chinook, and Centennial for my black IPA)

Well, I'm lucky and get to work today so I sent swmbo to the lhbs to see what they got. She grabbed me some black prinz. What do you all think about that?

So here's what I went with:

10lbs 2-row
1lb Munich 10
12oz Crystal 80
120z Black Prinz

1oz Summit 60 mins
1oz Cascade 20 mins
.25oz Columbus 15 mins
1oz Cascade 10 mins
.50oz Columbus 5 mins
1oz Cascade flameout
1oz Columbus flameout


Mashing right now. I've never worked with Black Prinz so, I guess we'll see what happens.

Sounds good my last bipa I went with crystal 60 and midnight wheat (should be pretty similar to black Prinz) and it was very tasty. Just a hint of smooth roastiness.