First Russian imperial stout. Any suggestions?

This will be a 5 gallon recipe scaled down to 2.5 gallons.

Grain Bill:

14 lbs Pale Malt(2 row)
14 oz Roasted Barley
12 oz Crystal Malt 120 L
8 oz Chocolate Malt
6 oz Biscuit Malt


Hops:
2 oz Magnum (60 minutes)-->72 IBU's

Yeast:
WLP007

I'm contemplating between cold pressing coffee for the secondary or adding it to the boil maybe with 5 minutes or less to spare. Opinions?

Okay, so I figured I'd use 120 L because I can't get Special B at my brew supply store, and I hear they're somewhat similar. What do you guys think about the hops? I'm not looking for bitterness to come through; I'm looking for more of a balance.

Thanks for any criticism,

Pat

Maybe 1lb of flaked barley and 8oz of crystal 40L added on?

Also I like northern brewer in dark beers.

Cold-pressing the coffee will make it less bitter, so I would definitely go for that. Coffee isn't supposed to boil at any point, but I could see either making the coffee like you would in the morning and adding to secondary or steeping some beans post-boil when the wort has cooled to 200 or so. You can lower the IBUs if you want, but they fade with age, and these beers are intended to age. Of course, the coffee will provide its own kind of bitterness, so I could see dropping it down to 1.5oz. The C-120 is probably the best sub for Special B; it's not exact, but the differences will be covered up in this beer. If it were me, I'd also add about half a pound of flaked oats to the 2.5G recipe to provide a smoothness and thickness that's great in stouts.

Fantastic, thanks guys.

To DrHop, I initially had 6 oz of crystal 60 L in there because I happen to have it laying around. Perhaps I should toss that back in?

Kingwood-Kid, I was definitely thinking the same thing with the oats. Do you think I should toast them? My only worry about toasting the oats is that I have biscuit malt in the recipe already. Do you think it would be too much of a toasted flavor?

I like some sweetness I my dark beers but it's totally personal preference. I'd say that I like ~1-1.5 lbs of crystal in a beer like this but it does start to dominate the beer at a certain level.

I wouldn't bother toasting the oats, since the flavor you'd get will be obscured by all the dark malts, coffee and IBUs. We're mostly after texture here. If you want it a little sweeter-tasting, there's several options. You could add the C-60 back in, which would give you another level of flavor you would notice. You could drop the IBUs as mentioned earlier. You could count on the thickness of the oats (or rye, that could be good too) negating some of the bitterness without actually adding sweetness. You could use a less aggressive and fruitier yeast than 007, which would be any other English yeast you could find. On a totally unrelated note: oak cubes.

He's going for a standard-gravity coffee-oat stout, rather than an imperial, but there's a lot to learn here: http://www.themadfermentationist.com/2012/06/toasted-oat-coffee-stout.html

Well, I think I've decided to switch to us-05. I want a clean yeast, and I was reading about how wlp007 can leave a lot of diacetyl.

This beer will have 0 hop character other than bitterness. I prefer a nice simple earthy hopping profile for darker beers to balance the roasted aroma and flavor. I'd throw in something like Willamette, Chinook or even fuggles. Ounce at 10 min, ounce at flameout and shave off some of the magnum to compensate.

Hey Jesper,

Yeah, I have changed the recipe around since this post. I have fuggles laying around, but I think I want to try out Willamette. I'll keep the magnum for bittering, but I'll be doing as you advised. Thanks!

Pat