Winter Warmer recipe feedback

Planning a darker winter warmer type brew. Aiming for around 7% and just under 50 IBUs. Thoughts? Feelings? Too much chocolate? Enough hops?

Grain Bill

11# -- Maris Otter
1.25# -- C90
1# -- Munich (10L)
1# -- CaraAroma
.75# -- Biscuit
.5# -- Chocolate

60 min mash @ 154*F

Hop Schedule

FWH -- Chinook -- 1 oz.
60 -- Willamette -- 1 oz.
30 -- Hallertau -- 1 oz.
Flameout -- EKG -- 1 oz.
Dry Hop 14 days -- EKG -- 2 oz.
Dry Hop 14 days -- Cascade -- 2 oz.

Safale - 04 - English Ale
Ferment @ 65*F

 

The hop blend seems odd. The willamette and Hallertau may get drowned out. I think maybe pick a hop flavor profile. Cascade and Chinook together is a nice citrusy piney combo and the EKG and Hallaertau will give a subtle, spicy hop flavor. Concentrate on one of the two profiles would be my advice. For me, the grain bill looks nice.

 

I think you are trying too much at once. Maybe reduce the dry hops slightly and focus on EKG / Hallertau / Willamette as a combo? Those hops do fairly well in 20-15m additions where you get more of the flavour than the aroma. With the grist, I'd personally drop the Biscuit malt entirely or reduce it down to ~4oz. I'd consider adding some sugar, the darker the better (invert #3/4 if you can, or maybe dark candi syrup) to get that nice dry finish, better body (less heavy) and hints of stone fruits.

 

Agreed that the hops combo does seem to clash conceptually. I looked to Jubelale for some inspiration, and Deschutes claims to use Bravo and Cascade to bitter, and EKG, Hallertau and some other lower AA hops for the wintery/spicy flavoring and aroma. I also saw a clone recipe floating around that called for Chinook as bittering addition, as well.

I ended up brewing yesterday and used the Chinook for as a FWH addition, but going to cut the Cascade from the dry hops. I suspect the citrusy aroma will do more harm than good. We'll see how it turns out...

 

Interesting. I'd purchased the ingredients before your post, but would like to try a similar recipe with the sugar addition you suggest. The biscuit was less than 5% of the total bill, so we'll see how overly heavy/malt-forward this ends up being.