Feedback on a recipe I found...

Was thinking of brewing a my first strong stout and found the below recipe on a homebrew site. Can you guys scrutinize? Has some cool ingredients... but with this being my first strong stout wanted to get some feedback.

I like chocolate... I like beer... Will the chocolate and brown sugar add anything worthy?

Feedback welcome. Please and thanks...



Brewing Method: Extract
Yeast: 2 pkg. Danstar-Nottingham
Yeast Starter: none
Batch Size: 5 Gallons
Original Gravity: ~1.068
Final Gravity: ~1.013
Alcohol Content: 7 %
Total Grains: 1/2 lb. crystal, black, and chocolate malt
Color:
Extract Efficiency: ? %
Hop IBU's: 35-50
Boiling Time: 70 minutes
Primary Fermentation: 21 days 70'F
Secondary Fermentation: 21 days
Additional Fermentation: 14 days in bottles, then stuck them in the frig.

Grain Bill:

3 lb. (muntons) plain light extract
4 lb. (muntons) dark extract
1/2 lb. dark brown sugar
1/2 lb. bitter sweet non-dairy chocolate
6 tsp gypsum
2 tsp. irish moss

Hop Bill:

3oz fuggles-boiling 45 minutes.
1oz ultra- finishing 5 minutes.

Mash Schedule:

let all the grains steep until rolling boil starts, around 15 minutes, then remove and add the fuggles.

Brewers Notes:

i found the non-dairy chocolate at a local health food store. real hop heads may want to increase the hop levels, i found this amount to be very well balanced. the stout retained the chocolate flavor threw the fermentation.~enjoy

Holy moly that's a lotta gypsum.

Non-dairy chocolate? That sounds dangerous to me, they likely replace the dairy with some kind of oil (I'd guess soybean), which isn't going to help anything.

Don't bother with bar chocolate, use cocoa powder or cacao nibs.

I'd replace the dark extract with light extract and use brewing software to get the color right by adding some chocolate malt or roasted barley - it is a stout, after all.

I tend to think brown sugar is a silly thing to brew with. It's essentially table sugar with trace amounts of molasses. If you want the molasses flavor, you're better off adding the trace amounts of molasses directly, and getting your gravity points from something other than cane sugar.

Note that this really is a trace amount of molasses. I believe brown sugar is something like 3% molasses by weight, but that's just from memory. I know I was able to find it online somewhere. 3% of .5 lbs is literally 7 grams, or a quarter of an ounce.