Buckwheat honey, sorghum extract, and oats...thoughts?

I'll be trying out my first GF recipe this coming Monday and wanted to get your input. I have a few AG batches under my belt and my brewing partner has been brewing AG for about 4 years. This is our first venture into GF.

So far I've gathered the following ingredients:

5# buckwheat honey (Sam from DFH said this is a base he used for Tweasonale)
6# Briess sorghum extract
Safale 04 and 05 dry yeast

We were also thinking of getting some GF oats to add some body to the brew. It looks like locally we get the Bob's Red Mill GF Steel Cut Oats. Anyone have experience with these in a sorghum based beer?

Since we are still learning about GF we were considering a 5 gallon batch split 5 ways into growlers for fermenting. This was we can pitch different yeast and try some different dry hopping.

We are trying to create something my wife can enjoy outside of the less-than-spectacular offerings available commercially. I appreciate the input.
Cheers!

I've never seen such a high proportion of honey in a GF brew, with nearly 50% like that you'll get a strong honey flavor. It will probably be delicious, but not necessarily beer-like.

You can definitely steep a few pounds of oats for body and flavor. Just don't boil them; also, toast them first. You might want to add some maltodextrin as well, and yeast nutrient if you go with the 5 lbs of honey.

Thanks for the input. I have no plans to use that all in just one batch. That's my supplies on hand for at least a couple of 5 gal batches. I'm curious what everyone's thoughts are on ratio of honey to sorghum to oats?

You said not to boil the oats. How would I go about putting things together? I'm used to a traditional AG mash followed by a boil. I'm expecting we would do some type of steeping of the oats, but I thought a boil would still be part of the process.

Unless you've got gluten-free malt, or some promalt enzyme formula, you're going to be following a process identitical to doing a traditional "extract + steeping grains" process. Basically, take about 1/3-to-1/2 pounds of oats per gallon of beer, toast (to whatever color suits the beer you want to make), and steep around 150°F for 30 or so minutes, then pull out, add extract, and boil as normal. You will not get any fermentables out of the oats, period. But they will provide a nice flavor and mouthfeel. Honey should be added at flame-out if you want a nice honey flavor and aroma, but you can throw it in at the beginning if you just want the sugars and proteins etc.

For a 5-gallon batch, I'd say go for something like 7 lbs sorghum, 2 lb honey, 2.5 lbs toasted oats. Or you can break the sorghum up with some rice syrup or rice solids, and do 3.5 lbs sorghum and 3.5 lbs rice extract. Other adjuncts to consider are candi syrup, palm sugar, brown sugar, agave nectar, and corn syrup (depending on what you're going for).

I have used all those ingredients before. Well maybe the honey wasn't buckwheat honey but...

Anyway the question is what style you want. I have used toasted oats in my stout recipe. I put them in a thin layer on a pan and tossed them in the oven and turned the temp up a few degrees at a time until I got something that smelled really good...then I just followed the usual steeping procedure with them.

As for the honey a pound or maybe even two is good. I have also cooked honey on the stove for darker beers.