Oaked and Smoked American Imperial/Double Stout

Hey guys,

I have an idea for a new brew, somewhat inspired by The Bruery's Smoking Wood, but I'm not necessarily trying to clone it. Anyway here it is:

Oaked and Smoked Midwest Stout
OG - 1.096
FG - 1.024
IBU - 35.1
SRM - 34.5
Potential ABV - 9.5%

Grains:
10 lb 2 row
4 lb Rauch
.5 lb roasted barley
.5 lb Carafa II
.5 lb crystal 30
3 lb dark DME

Hops:
1.5 cascade 60 min
1.5 cascade 15 min

Yeast:
2 packets safale us-05? Or a higher gravity Wyeast/White labs strain maybe? Not sure here, never done/had to do a starter

Other:
Will primary down to FG, cold crash, then rack to secondary on bourbon soaked oak cubes, and use wine thief for samples from there out. Then kegging v bottle conditioning?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Haven't done an oak aged beer since I was way too much of a novice to understand, also wanted to know if anyone has advice on specialty grains... I've gotten gun shy on the dark malts since I like maltier/creamier imperial stouts.

From Biermuncher's Loon Lake Smoked Porter:

There was a lengthy back and forth discussion on this recipe here, and the common theme is that you can’t fear the smoke. Anything less than 35% smoked malt and the flavor/aroma will be so slight as to be missed…depending on the grain bill.

Click to expand...

Right now, you're at 21%. To get to 35+%, you'd need to be planning 7 lbs. pale two-row and 7 lbs. smoked malt.

I think that, at 3 lbs., the dark DME is going to give you an unpleasant level of roasted flavor. To go for creaminess and not overly roasted, you might consider going to Munich or Amber DME, and maybe trade half a pound of DME for half a pound of a dark crystal, like C80L.

US-05 would be work fine, I think, as would Danstar Nottingham or BRY-97. If you wanted to try a liquid, then Wyeast 1728 Scottish, 1084 Guinness, or 1450 Denny's should also give good results.