Help With Belgian Strong Dark Ale Recipe

I've looked at a few recipes and all of them seem like a huge jumble of flavors. Except for the pound of wheat (I like wheat and the good head it gives), I've tried to shoot for something in the middle of the range I've seen for each ingredient. I'm going to make my own invert sugar - there's a good thread on that somewhere here. This is what I have so far, but any help is much appreciated. Or should I just go brew something else?

Stats
(assuming 70% efficiency and 75% attenuation)
Volume: 6 gallons
IBU: 23
OG: 1.106
FG: 1.026
ABV: 10.4%
Color: 35 SRM
Yeast: WYeast Trappist High Gravity

Fermentables:
9 lb Pilsner
3 lb Munich
1 lb Wheat
1 lb Biscuit
0.75 lb CaraVienne
0.75 lb Special B
0.75 lb Aromatic
- Buffer @ pH 5.2 and rest @ 145F for 90 minutes

1 lb Candi Syrup D2
2 lb Extra Light DME
2 lb Invert Sugar

Hops
60 min - 1.5 oz Yakima Magnum (13.4%)
10 min - 0.5 oz Styrian Goldings (5.0%)

More hops!

FiddleTilDeath said:

More hops!

Click to expand...

Bittering or aroma?

Bittering I say. Thats a pretty low IBU for that % alc even in a dark belgian.

35 SRM is really dark for a Belgian Strong Dark, too. The BJCP lists the max as 22 SRM. I actually don't think you'd get 35 SRM from your grainbill, but it may be a bit dark for the style.

I kind of disagree about the hops. You're in the acceptable range, and that's around where I like the IBUs in a Belgian Dark Strong. But that's just my opinion.

35 is definitely really dark, though I agree with mkling, it doesn't seem like you'll actually get that from the bill listed.

haplo said:

35 is definitely really dark, though I agree with mkling, it doesn't seem like you'll actually get that from the bill listed.

Click to expand...

Hmm... I use a spreadsheet to calculate all of this stuff based on formulas I've found online. It's been pretty spot-on for calculating things like gravity and stuff, but I recently added the color feature.

Also I may have miscalculated the color contributions of the invert sugar and D2 syrup. Sooner or later I'll probably break down and get brewsmith or promash but this seems to be working pretty well. I think I put the color of D2 and Special B as 180L and the invert sugar (really a dark candy sugar) as 60L.

Can you even tell a difference between 22 and 35 SRM?

Ouroboros said:

Can you even tell a difference between 22 and 35 SRM?

Click to expand...

22 is the color of an average brown ale. 35 is the color of an average stout. So yep, they are different. I think the color of D2 is usually considered to be 80L. Invert sugar is also probably not really going to be 60L unless you really caramelize it super heavily.

Midwest has D2 with 80 SRM in the picture and 160 SRM listed below.

Agree on the invert sugar probably not getting that dark.

haplo said:

35 is definitely really dark, though I agree with mkling, it doesn't seem like you'll actually get that from the bill listed.

Click to expand...

Okay, I recalculated it with D2 as 80L and the sugar as 10L (since I'm not going to heavily carmelize it) and I get a color of ~26 SRM. Still higher than the style. I'm not terribly concerned about that, especially since some people have said that the grain bill shouldn't be too dark.

Though if anyone sees modifications that could be made to the grain bill, both in terms of taste and in terms of color, please fire away.