Recipe Critique- Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale Clone- PM

Well, I wanted to have a good canidate for Bourbon Oak Chip aging and this seemed like the perfect base for it. I got this out of the Extreme Brewing book but for some reason I feel like there's something missing (also, I'm just going to use regular chocolate malt insted of "light").

Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale
OG: 1.070 FG: 1.015 ABV: 7.2%

7 lbs Light Dry Malt Extract
10 oz British Amber Malt
10 oz 60 Lovibond Crystal Malt
8 oz Light chocolate Malt
2 oz Roasted Barley
½ oz Warrior hops (60 min)
8 oz Dark Brown Sugar (10 min)
1 oz Vanguard hops (end of boil)
Ringwood Ale/Wyeast 1187

I made this recipe last June and was unimpressed. It is nowhere close to the real thing. Mine was VERY roasty, almost salty, and one dimensional. The malt bill is wrong. If I were to do it again, I'd:

- Try to exchange the hops bill for what they actually say on the bottle (can't recall but I know it is different).
- exchange the Crystal 60L for 8 oz Special B,
- Might add a touch of Munich (1lb or less) and offset the LDME.

I very much liked the Ringwood yeast, but I don't think that's what they used in production. Just some thoughts, but if someone has a good recipe, I'd be interested to see it.

Awwww....bummer. I was hoping this would been a good one....but my Brewer-sense was tingling (either that or the Head and Soulders shampoo was working) so I knew something was off about the recipe.

Well, it looks like I'll just fall back to my original plan which was this:

Bell’s Best Brown Ale (5 gallons, extract with grains)
OG = 1.058 FG = 1.013 IBUs = 30 ABV = 5.9%

Ingredients
6 lbs. Light malt extract
14 oz. Victory malt
14 oz. Special Roast malt
14 oz. Crystal malt (60° L)
2 oz. Chocolate malt
6.2 AAU Cascade hops (bittering hop)
(0.75 oz. of 8.3% alpha acid)
3.25 AAU Nugget hops (bittering hop)
(0.25 oz. of 13% alpha acid)
1.2 AAU Fuggle hops (flavor hop)
(0.25 oz. of 4.7% alpha acid)
2.4 AAU Fuggle hops (aroma hop)
(0.5 oz. of 4.7% alpha acid)
1 tsp. Irish moss for 45 min.
White Labs WLP001 (California Ale) yeast

Me and some buddies have tried multiple times to clone Indian Brown with not so great results. My one buddy made the recipe from the book to a T, and it definately got better with age. Like 6-12 months of age. Even then, it didn't taste too similar to the real thing, but it was good.

Mine was too grassy from the dry hops, but I did let them sit in the fermenter for 2 weeks. Also, the original recipe calls for coffee malt, which I couldn't find locally. They say light chocolate is a good substitute, but I couldn't find that either. I ended up with regular chocolate malt too.

I think your Bell's clone looks good. This thread got me thinking, so I bought a 6pack of Indian Brown Ale today. Hops are Liberty and Goldings as written on the bottle, which are different that the Vanguard and Warrior in the recipe. I'm going to try a tasting and see what comes to mind - I've wanted to clone this beer, and have been unsuccessful in finding anything on the internet except the book's recipe.