Baltic Porter

Here is a recipe for a toned down Black Butte XXI that I have been tweaking. Let me know what you think.

6.6 lbs Light LME
2.5 lbs Light DME
1.5 lbs Wheat DME
8 oz 80L Crystal
11 oz German Carapils
10 oz 350L choc malt
10 oz 450L choc malt
6 oz Black Patent
4 oz Toasted Barley

Hops
1.5 oz Galena(bittering)
1 oz Cascade(flavor)
1 oz Tetnanger(aroma)

I will add 4 oz of ethiopian/sumatra coffe mixture to secondary along with 4 oz of cocoa nibs the last 15 min of the boil and 4 oz into the secondary

I'm not familiar with your inspiration but I do like the direction you took with the grain bill and have some suggestions.

For the roasted malts, I would include pale chocolate and decrease the quantity as the darker they get. Something like:

10 oz Pale Chocolate
8 oz Chocolate (350 or 450L)
4 oz Black Pat

You can tweak them up and down but hopefully you see where I'm going. I feel you'll get a more complex roasted character while taming down the acrid bite.

The toasted barely would really need to be mashed and afraid it would be lost with all the roasted malts. I would leave it out.

I had already brewed up the recipe before you replied but I did go with 20 oz of the 350L chocolate instead of doing half 450L and half 350L. It's pretty dark. I missed the OG but I'm pretty sure that's because I added about a gallon more water to the boil than I had planned and only extended the boil by 30 min. So the OG is 1.085 instead of 1.100. The fermentation seems to be coming along nicely. It's been in the primary for 7 days and there's still some good activity going on. If I can get the FG to 1.014 or lower I'll be very pleased with the final ABV. 2 more weeks till the secondary!