Toffee Almond English

I am of the mindset that even though traditional beer is good and doesn't need to have anything about it changed, I like to experiment. My current mad scientist idea is from one of my favorite UK Treats....English Toffee.

I was wondering if anyone would have some ideas that would make this taste of toffee and almonds but not sickeningly sweet.

I was thinking about using a pound of carmalized sugar and some roasted Almonds and then bumping up the hops to reduce the final presence of the caramel. Any words of wisdom or ideas would be helpful. not looking for a very high ABV but I think somewhere in the range of 4.5 to 6 percent would offset the sweetness of the caramel.

I think a really big part of the pleasure of toffee comes from its salt balance. Just don't add NaCl until packaging time because Na hobbles yeast and you can dial in the flavor better after ferment.

Mosher recommends taking equal parts XLDME and sugar and cooking them on the stove until they caramelize for a toffee flavor. I tried it for the Caramel Quad recipe he put in the Radical brewing book and it worked. A toffee aroma and flavor came through. For my quad I used 1 lb XLDME and 1 lb sugar - but that was a 9% beer. Maybe try 1/2 lb each for yours. Cooking it on the stove is a PITA - it tends to clump together, so use a big pan so you have plenty of room to spread it out.

Thanks for the bits of information I will keep them in mind when I actually get around to making this beer. I feel that a big part of this batch will be proper planning and research. the last thing I want is a sickeningly sweet candy beer without the proper flavoring.