Chocolate Imperial Stout

All grain
OG - 1.082
FG - 1.014
ABV - 9.5%
IBU est. - 61

Grain bill:
Briess 2-row barley - 12lbs
Crystal 60L - 1 lb
Chocolate Malt 350L - 1lb
Flaked Barley - 1lb

Hops:
Columbus pellets (13.8%AA) - 1oz - 60 min boil
Fuggle pellets (5.3%AA) - 0.5oz - 30 min boil
Fuggle pellets - 0.5oz - 15 min boil

Other boil additions:
Wyeast nutrient - 1/2 tsp - 10 min boil
Irish Moss - 1/2 tsp - 10 min boil

Water:
Alkalinity as CaCO3 - 45
Cl - 3 ppm
Ca - 50 ppm
Mg - 7 ppm
Sulfate - 7 ppm
Sodium - 3 ppm

Mash (70% efficiency):
Sacch. rest @ 152F for 60 min
Mash out @ 160F for 10 min

120 min boil

Yeast:
1 packet WLP007 added to 1.5L of 1.035 OG wort and placed on stir plate for 18 hours

Fermentation:
Primary - 66F - 1 week
Secondary - 66F - 2 weeks

Fermenter additions:
Cocoa nibs - 4oz - added to beer when it was racked to secondary
Light toast American oak chips - 25g - added to secondary during final 7 days before bottling

 

Update: scored a 36 in competition for the wood-aged beer category. Feel and look recieved perfect scores. Most points were lost in the flavor category; the oak flavors "took away from an otherwise excellent base beer. Remove the wood or attempt using a darker toast."

 

I put them on a cookie sheet and put them in a 200F oven for about 10 min to kill off any of the bugs. This also made my kitchen smell really good for the rest of the night. Boiling oak, especially with such a high surface area:volume ratio, might bring out too many astringent/undesireable tannins from the wood. You can also put them in an alcohol of your choosing for ~48 hours (or longer), but I didn't want any alcohol flavors to clash with the really strong chocolate flavor and aroma that the nibs were putting off.

All this being said, the beer is sitting at ~9% when these get added, so I wasn't super concerned with an infection.

 

I felt like there was a good level of roasted character from just the 350L chocolate, but I don't think a little black patent or roasted barley would hurt if you want to tweak the recipe a bit.

The reason I didn't use any of the darker malts is because my local homebrew store has been a little unreliable with the quality of the dark malts. I've done some batches where I got some green pepper flavor using fuggle and bullion hops, neither of which have any green pepper flavor. After some research, I found that if dark malts are roasted poorly, there can be some green pepper aroma and/or flavor contribution. Personally, I don't like pepper flavor in any beer, and I especially didn't want to risk it in a chocolate stout.

 

Yes, this is for 5 gallons