BlackJack porter clone needs yeast

[GunNut76]

I wrote LeftHand Brewing for a hint on what they put in their BlackJack Porter, this is the response:

I appreciate your interest in brewing great beer but I am severly
limited in what I could tell you about ours. So what I can tell you is
this:
About 75% pale malt
18% crystal
3% wheat (this
helps alot with mouth feel)
4-5% dark malts
(we use chocolate)
In the kettle we use magnum for bittering and finish with Goldings.

Good luck, and if you open a brewery with my beer I would have to
kill you! Happy Holidays.
Joe
Schiraldi (LHTBC)

Based on that I came up with this:

8 lb Pale Malt
2.3 lb Crystal 60 or maybe 40
.8 lb Wheat Malt
1 lb Chocolate Malt

1 oz Magnum 60 min
1 oz KG 15 min

now I just need the yeast. I was thinking Wyeast 1028 or 1388 or WL002, 005 or 023. Anybody have a suggestion? The beer is supposed to have a carmel sweetness to it, in fact I said "liquid carmel" when I tasted it for the first time. Not really bitter, leans more to the malty side I would have to say. This is my first attempt at formulating an AG and any tweeks or improvements would be helpful.

[Beerconnoisseur]

...however, the thing that caught my eye was that your recipe appears to deviate slightly from the percentages that they list.

2.3 lbs of crystal malt will more than likely make the beer too sweet. Based on the recipe, the crystal should be near 1.92 lbs. I'd go with

1/2 lb. 10L
1/2 lb. 20L
1/4 lb. 60L
1/2 lb. 75(or 90)L
1/4 lb. 120L

each of which are crystal malts. If you are following the recipe, then the wheat should be closer to 4 or 5 oz., while the dark (chocolate) malt should be close to 7 or 8 oz. 8 Lbs. of British Pale malt is fine for the base malt.

I'll also mention that Austin Homebrew (http://www.austinhomebrew.com/) has caramel and chocolate wheats available, so you can play around with these, if you like.

I would stick with WL002, especially if you want to keep the emphasis on the "pure" malt flavor. When you are ready to drink the finished beer, if you drink it sooner, the individual malt flavors will be more noticeable, which is what I prefer. But your mileage may vary, of course. :)

[GunNut76]

AIS this beer is pretty sweet. I think if I follow this recipe I will end up with a BJP session beer, so I will up the pale malt to 10# to get the OG around 1.060.

[brewmonkey]

Alot of brewers use WLP 002 for the house strain as it is a superfast yeast and floc's very quickly (too quickly sometimes). I would use that and see where it gets you.

If you are not sure call Whitelabs and ask them for some intel.