Pretzel Beer request

Beer Recipes
1

My friend recently had a commercial example of pretzel beer which he asked me to try to make a version of for his upcoming birthday.  I didn’t exactly dig this particular beer but I’d like to riff on the concept and hopefully make something a little more palatable.  I have in mind a malt forward slightly toasted beer along the lines of an english brown ale.  Here is the grain bill I came up with to get started but all input is welcome:

Batch Size: 4g, Boil Size: 5g
Mash: 60 min @ 151F, 1.36qt/lb
Boil Time: 60 min
OG: 1.052, FG 1.015 ABV: 4.9% SRM 12 IBU: 28

3.5 lbs Vienna
3.25 lbs Wheat Malt
5 oz. Melanoidin
5 oz. Victory
3 oz. Chocolate Rye
1 oz East Kent Goldings @ 60min
1 oz East Kent Goldings @ 5min
Wyeast 1099 Whitbread Ale

As far as water goes, I’ve built a profile off of RO water to get me up to 100ppm calcium and keep a balanced chloride/sulfate ratio and adding table salt up to 150ppm of sodium.  I suspect I will need to re-salt to taste after primary but can do that to taste.

2

I guess if I was actually going to attempt to make a pretzel beer I would probably actually add pretzels to a secondary and use a lighter tasting beer (not so much melanoidin/victory) and see if I picked up pretzel character that way rather than trying tom emulate with malt.

Regarding your recipe: Aside from the salt, I don’t get that much biscuit character from pretzels. For hard pretzels it is salty and crackery and for soft pretzels it is salty and doughy. Feels like the victory and melanoidin may be too flavorful and spin this too far away from actually tasting anything like a pretzel and more like a dark bread.