Here is one that I have brewed several times and am constantly trying to get more of the roasty flavor out of it. I started off trying to brew a clone of Left Hand's milk stout. I'm not Gordon Strong but I think it is close and I like it. In fact after this post, I am going to some more digging on what I can do to get more of the roast flavor to shine.
11 gallon batch. Mash at 150 *F. Mine ended up lower than usual ABV at 5.1%. 1.053 OG to 1.014 FG. 27 IBUs. My efficiency is low (which I am trying to figure out): 67% I used to be close to 80%. Anyway.
15 lbs 8.0 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) Grain 1 56.9 %
2 lbs 8.0 oz Munich Malt - 10L (10.0 SRM) Grain 2 9.2 %
1 lbs 8.0 oz Barley, Flaked (1.7 SRM) Grain 3 5.5 %
1 lbs 8.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 60L (60.0 SRM) Grain 4 5.5 %
1 lbs 4.0 oz Oats, Flaked (1.0 SRM) Grain 5 4.6 %
0.75 oz Magnum [14.00 %] - Boil 60.0 min Hop 6 16.9 IBUs
0.55 tsp Irish Moss (Boil 10.0 mins) Fining 7 -
2.10 oz Challenger [8.90 %] - Boil 10.0 min Hop 8 10.9 IBUs
2 lbs Milk Sugar (Lactose) [Boil for 10 min](0.0 SRM) Sugar 9 7.3 %
2.0 pkg Irish Ale Yeast (White Labs #WLP004) Yeast 10 -
2 lbs Chocolate Malt (350.0 SRM) Grain 11 7.3 %
1 lbs Roasted Barley (300.0 SRM) Grain 12 3.7 %
One thing I do is that I cold steep the dark grains in a bowl the night before. This is the chocolate malt and the roasted barley. I put a hop bag in the bowl, then pour the crushed grains into the bowl. To those 3# of grains, I added 2 gallons of water. When you're ready for the tea, just pull the bag out of the bowl. It will be black as the devils soul.
I ended up with about 1.5 gallons of the dark tea. Make sure you factor in the volume of the tea in your water calcs. Which may be tough if you don't know how much you will end up with. I add my dark tea right at flameout. My reasoning was that if mashing the grains (for an hour) would lend harshness to the beer, then I wouldn't want to boil even the tea for an hour. But on the other hand, I couldn't see adding just plain old non-heated tea to my precious wort. So I split the diff. The temps at flame out are high enough to (hopefully) kill off anything but its not that hot for too long to make it harsh.
I have never brewed this without cold steeping so I don't know how much smoother the cold steeping is versus otherwise. But it is smooth....
Good luck whatever you decide.