would flaked wheat help with the head retention? or just flaked barley. I dont know that much about head and lace yet.
I am not going to go with any cocoa powder. (i saw posts that suggested balancing the cocoa powder with lactose, which i did not understand, because lactose is not fermentable. wouldn't it make the beer way too sweet?). I will just use lots of chocolate malt. is 1.5 lbs too much with only 8lbs mariss otter?
i think its looking like
8 lbs MO
1 chocolate
.5 pale chocolate
1 vienna
1 roasted barley
.5 40L
.5 60L
.5 flaked wheat?
2 oz williamete @ 60
irish ale yeast w/starter
mash at ~156 (with a non digital therm its kinda hard to read)
5 hot peppers (open to suggestions as to which)
thanks again to stagstout and mattupnorth for the awesome feedback.
Currently you are at these numbers
62% Maris Otter
12% Chocolates
8% Vienna
8% Roasted Barley
4% C40L
4% C60L
5% Flaked
or essentially
70% Base
20% Roasted
8% Crystal
5% Flaked
If you go by percentages I would make it look like this
75% Base Malt (Two Row, Maris Otter, Vienna, Munich, Pilsner)
10-15% Total Roasted Malts (Black Roast, Black Patent, Chocolate)
5-10% Flaked (Barley, Rye, Wheat, Oats)
5% Other Things (Crystal, Additional Things)
That will give you a nice balanced flavor that is nice and roasty, creamy and not overly sweet. If you are looking for malty, then mash a little higher rather than adding more crystal malts. 1lb of crystal is a bit more than I like to add to my beer on a five gallon batch unless I am making something for the masses to enjoy or something that has some hops to kinda rid that sweet flavor. That said, if you are going to add hot peppers, then it might be a good idea to go with that amount of crystal in order to balance out the heat. Although, I am not sure how long the hot pepper lasts compared to roast and hops.
Lastly is that you might want to look at the darker than 40L crystals. I recently made my stout using 80L and I really dig the flavor. 60L is my favorite flavor because they start to get more figgy, rummy and raiseny after that. 120L tastes like a burnt fig to me, so I limit that in anything.
My last recipe was
72% Base Malts
13% Flaked
12% Roasted
3% Crystal
Good Luck Gents!