Brewing "Big" Beers, Gluten-Free

So, I just got my hands on a copy of Stone's book, and I gotta say, it's making me nostalgic for when I could drink their beer. I want to make something BIG, ~8% and preposterously hoppy. Have any of y'all attempted something ambitious like that?

Things I'm wondering about:

-What happens when you use a large amount of sorghum extract in a high-gravity ale? Is it super twangy?
-Would burnt/caramelized honey be a good way to get some kinda caramelly crystal malt-esque backbone?
-Adjunct grains--toasted millet, toasted quinoa, or buckwheat?

My rather uneducated guess at a 3-gallon recipe would be 2 lbs sorghum, 2 lbs amber candi sugar, 2 lbs burnt honey, 1 lb rice solids, and maybe 1 lb toasted quinoa for flavor, fermented with Windsor to be a tad under-attenuated, with enough hops to hit 100+ IBU's (I'm thinking Apollo, maybe?). I'm not exactly going for an Arrogant Bastard clone, more trying to riff on the Stone mentality, but I'd prefer to avoid an unmitigated disaster. Thoughts/theories/ideas/amusing "big beer" anecdotes?

Maybe I'm putting this the wrong way; what's the "biggest" GF beer any of y'all have brewed to date? C'mon, anyone?

The biggest beer I've made would be Dkershner's Belgian Triple at about 6%

If you can malt and mash other grains I'd probably do that over a full sorghum extract beer. I've read on here that calcium carbonate can be used to reduce the acidity of the sorghum which makes the beer "twangy". I had great success using it in a raspberry ale to keep it from being too sour.

I'm currently planning a IIPA and then something like a 200 IBU beer. I need to start tracking the acidity of my beers I think and work on reducing it to a balanced ph.

My PA IPA is 6.5% and taste unreal.

I think you're on the right track with the little-bit-of-everything approach to increase your gravity. I see no reason not to use some sorghum syrup in that kind of witch's brew. I mean, are you really gonna notice? If you mix all those elements together, I would hazard the guess that unless you steer it pretty solidly toward a target flavor it'll end up either kind of ambiguous or very complex tasting.

I did a honey ale that ended up at 6.8%. It honestly doesn't taste too alcoholic because the buckwheat honey overpowers the beer. That's my top. I was contemplating doing a 10-12% russian imperial stout though.

Oh man, I'd love to do a russian imperial stout, but how? Do you have a recipe idea? I know you've at least brewed more stouts than I have, have you come up with some good tricks?

I was thinking of doing a 2.5 gallon batch and using ~8 lbs of LME brown rice syrup to boost the OG. From there, I was going to add buckwheat honey like I usually do for some malt character. Then, I was going to roast several pounds of quinoa at varying degrees from intensely dark, burnt, and acrid to 40 lovibond or so. I think some molasses would help with color. Also, I would add some cocoa powder to the end of the boil and coffee and vanilla in the secondary. I think you'd end up with a pretty flavorful and strong beer. I'm moving soon so I don't have time to start this now, but I'm definitely going to brew this in the future.

Daaamn, 8 lbs of BRS in a 2.5 gallon batch, with buckwheat honey on top of it? That sounds like it would end up pretty dry, and with the roasted grains, cocoa, and coffee, I'd expect a dry and bitter stout, with a thin body, unless you used a yeast with a pretty low attenuation. But then, what I expect hasn't been a great predictor of what comes out so far, LOL.

Have you ever used cacao nibs instead of cocoa powder? The oatmeal chocolate stout recipe in the Stone book calls for adding the nibs to the boil, which I would never have thought was a good idea, but now I'm curious about it.

Other things I'm wondering about for inclusion in an imperial russian stout: roasted shredded beets, dark-roasted buckwheat (LOL, doesn't get more "russian" than beets and kasha!), dark corn syrup, burnt honey (bochet), and dark-roasted bananas. I might try an experiment of grating a few pounds of beets and then roasting them in the oven with some chopped bananas until they brown, and then mashing them with sweet potato and dark-roasted buckwheat, and then mixing the resultant wort with some mixture of sugar syrups (BRS, DCS, bochet, dark candi syrup, etc.). Bah, too many ideas, not enough time!

I did a pretty strong tripel. 6.25 lbs sorghum, 1.25 lbs Rice Syrup, 2.5 lbs sugar (1.25 lb was light amber candi sugar).

It came out good, though very strong (and my measured OG was a bit higher than online calculators showed, 1.08, and the final gravity was way down at like 1.005).

Just brewed my 2nd GF beer. My first was my 2nd brew ever, this is over 100 batches later, finally. It ended up being a Belgian Specialty. It was supposed to be 9% or so, looks like it should be around 12% when it's done, hah. Not sure how it's going to turn out but I'll post here if it's good. Here's the recipe anyway though. If it's a little odd, or just needs some tweaking, I will probably make some real dark candi syrup and add to the fermenter, and hope the yeast survive, hah. Never messed with T-58 until now. I remember my first having no head at all. Acted like a soda. So I'm hoping steeping these grains will help with that. There was definitely a lot of hot break going on.

Recipe: O'Daniel's Gluten Free Belgian
Brewer: O'Daniel
TYPE: Extract

Recipe Specifications
--------------------------
Batch Size: 3.00 gal
Boil Size: 4.07 gal
Estimated OG: 1.111 SG
Estimated Color: 7.7 SRM? (No idea)
Estimated IBU: 25.7 IBU
Boil Time: 60 Minutes

Ingredients:
------------
Amount Item Type % or IBU
6 lbs 9.6 oz Sorghum Extract (4.0 SRM) Extract 63.77 %
1 lbs Gluten Free Oats (1.0 SRM) Grain 9.66 %
12.0 oz Quinoa (2.0 SRM) Grain 7.25 %
1.00 oz Saaz [5.50 %] (60 min) Hops 21.0 IBU
0.50 oz Styrian Goldings [2.60 %] (30 min) Hops 3.8 IBU
0.25 oz Styrian Goldings [2.60 %] (10 min) Hops 0.9 IBU
0.25 oz Coriander Seed (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
0.50 oz Orange Peel, Sweet (Boil 10.0 min) Misc
2 lbs Light Candi Syrup (2.0 SRM) Sugar 19.32 %
1 Pkgs SafBrew Specialty Ale (DCL Yeast #T-58) Yeast-Ale


Mash Schedule: None
Total Grain Weight: 1.00 lb
----------------------------
Steep grains as desired (30-60 minutes)


Notes:
------
Pitched at 72*F.

Light Candi Syrup:
2 Lbs Organic Sugar (not as processed/white)
1 Cup Water
Boil to around 260*F