Strong alcohol flavor/brown ale

After having several successful batches I attempted the Brown Ale recipe from 'Extreme Brewing'. O.G. 1.073 and gravity at 1.015, and still bumping about once every minute or so through the blowoff tube, when I racked to secondary after two weeks in primary. I tasted the sample and found the alcohol flavor to overwhelm every other flavor. No beer taste, just alcohol! Fermented with US-05 at an average temp of 73. Palmer's book says fusel alcohol is formed at above 80 deg. This recipe has 1# belgian candy and 8 fl/oz molasses in the boil in addition to 8oz crystal and 6.6# LME. 6 oz maple syrup added after 4 days of fermentation. This is an expensive recipe and I'd hate to have it go to waste. Will the alcohol flavor moderate during conditioning? Do I have a fusel alcohol problem? Anyone else have this result from this recipe? Of course at this point I'm going to bottle and hope but I would like to hear from the more experienced brewers.

Well, those "hot" alcohol flavors can come from the fermentation of simple sugars as well as at a high temperature. With the molasses, candi sugar, maple syrup, etc, that can cause some "hotness" that will mellow with time. Just like when I make wine- a 14% ABV wine is hot for about a year, but gets much better with some age as it mellows out.

Was your fermentation temperature 73 degrees, or was that your room temperature?

I'm judging the fermentation temperature by the highest reading I saw on the fermometer stuck on my carboy. It possibly could have been higher at some time that I didn't check but 80deg seems unlikely. What is a reasonable conditioning time for a high ABV beer?