Avery Reverend pseudo-clone recipe (advice)

My buddy is a big fan of Avery's The Reverend. We were talking about brewing up a batch last night and I started mulling over a possible recipe. According to Avery's website, these are the ingredients and characteristics:

Hop Variety: Styrian Goldings
Malt Variety: Two-row barley, cara 8, cara 20, caramel 15L, caramel 40L, Belgian special B
OG: 1.093 * ABV: 10.0% * IBUs: 10

After playing around on Hopville this morning and altering a few of the ingredients for personal taste, i came up with the following recipe. Was curious to see what people thought and if they think it needs tweaking to become a little more "Reverend-esque." Thanks!

Grain/Sugar Bill:
12 lb. Belgian Pale
0.5 lb. Caramel 10L
0.5 lb. Caramel 40L
0.5 lb. CaraVienne
0.5 lb. CaraMunich
0.5 lb. Special B
2.0 lb. Belgian Candy Sugar Light

Hops:
1.25 oz. Styrian Goldings (60 min.)

Yeast:
WLP570 Belgian Golden Ale

Mash:
Single infusion at 150 F for 60 minutes. (I listened to an interview with Adam Avery where he said that Avery only does single infusion mashes.) Batch sparge.

*****

Hopville estimates this as 1.093 OG, 1.021 FG, 19 SRM, and 10 IBUs. I think that is dead on for ABV and color, so I'm pretty happy with my guesstimates so far. Is just the one hop bittering addition correct for a Belgian Strong like this? Also, what do people more experienced than I think about the yeast choice? Same goes for mash. I know it's a bit low, but I want this thing to be as dry as a Strong can get (since I don't think I will be able to get it below 1.02 anyway...).

Again, thanks for any help!

Avery uses Wyeast 3787 (while labs 530) for all their high gravity belgians. I think that one hop addition will replicate the revvie pretty well, there isn't much hop aroma/flavor in it, but knowing Avery, they likely have late additions. I know Salvation has a ton of late hops. I'd probably mash for 90 minutes at 148-150 so that you will hit your FG, there is plenty of unfermentable sugars coming from the cara malts.

Every clone for this recipe that I come across uses Belgian Light sugars, but this beer, according to both the bottle and the website, uses Belgian Dark sugars. Something to bear in mind when thinking about your SRM...

Thats a ton of crystal for a high gravity beer. Does The Rev finish sweet? If not, I'd cut back a bit.

Nope- not very sweet. Pretty dry actually. It is barely hopped, so they rely on the dryness to cut the sweet and allow the subtle flavors (spiciness, dark cherries, currants, molasses) to come through. You can read about it at averybrewing.com

tedclev said:

Nope- not very sweet. Pretty dry actually. It is barely hopped, so they rely on the dryness to cut the sweet and allow the subtle flavors (spiciness, dark cherries, currants, molasses) to come through. You can read about it at averybrewing.com

Click to expand...

If that's the case I'd keep the crystal to .5 lb or 1 lb max and use dark candi sugar to get your color and desired flavors.

tedclev said:

Nope- not very sweet. Pretty dry actually. It is barely hopped, so they rely on the dryness to cut the sweet and allow the subtle flavors (spiciness, dark cherries, currants, molasses) to come through. You can read about it at averybrewing.com

Click to expand...

Are you kidding me? I had this beer not too long ago and it was cloyingly sweet to me. Tasted like a thick, syrupy mess. There is no way this finishes below 1.020.

In the book "brew like a monk" they have there yeast as Wyeast #3787. They brew salvation then pull the yeast off that and pitch it into the Rev.

Just e-mail the brewery and ask. In my experience Avery has been extremly open about sharing their recipes.

KellyK said:

Just e-mail the brewery and ask. In my experience Avery has been extremly open about sharing their recipes.

Click to expand...

Any idea what email address to use? The "info" address is unlikely to yield results. (I'm not being sarcastic, by the way. Genuinely interested if you have any suggestions.)

So no one things I'm a non-responsive poster, I PMed the OP with the contact info I have for Avery.

here's my review on the actual reverend: [ame=http://www.youtube.com/user/epicbeerdude?feature=mhee#p/u/1/eJla4-Yiivc]epicbeerdude's Channel - YouTube[/ame]

Please post the final changes you made to your recipe if you can.