I'll retract my earlier opinion that the malt doesn't matter... I mean, I still suspect if it was JUST the RB that was different, and they had similar Lovibond ratings, you're going to have burnt out a lot of the subtlety, but I will be the first to admit that any roast barley is a LOOOOOONG way away from my expertise. 

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Flaked barley is magic?

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Oh, there's also an experiment here: http://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=201483&page=3

Ingoogni, I love having your input on various topics. You come from a different frame of reference, and challenge some of those ideas a lot of us seem to consider as "just how things are supposed to be".

What I think Matt's going for is more the big, monster American RIS which I think requires the complexity of multiple roasted grains/malts.

Can confirm. 

Is monster.

If you go through the range of toasted an roasted malts from Biscuit (50 EBC) to patent Black (1100+EBC) there is a gap at ~200 - 500 EBC. There are no roasted malts in that colour range as to get that colour many chemicals are produced in the malt that taste nasty. In darker malts these chemicals evaporate, in lighter malts they are not formed.

Brown malt is on the edge and sometimes slightly over. Some of these components are there in low levels and contribute in a positive way to the complexity of this malt, it also makes the taste of the malt change depending on the amount used. From bread crust to salmiak (salty liquorice) to black chocolate to burnt. Never underestimate the effect of a lot of brown malt.

A similar change in taste can be observed in black malt, from a slight bittering with a burnt edge to deeply bittering with the taste of old leather without the burnt edge. The dark malts, brown and up also have a negative impact on fermentability (the yeast I use is a beast).

What do added flakes? They mainly add sugar, so I just add sugar instead of flakes, sugar with a taste. A taste that doesn't go under against the dark malt and has quite a few aspects of cara malt, but different.

In the case of oats they also add that silky mouthfeel, where rye is more sticky. Is that mouthfeel so much more compared to a beer mashed in higher? So for a silkier, or fuller mouthfeel I mash higher, not just a few ‚°C, but a lot. You can go up to 80‚°C, fermentability drops a lot then. Make sure you have full conversion, maybe use a enzyme booster and mash out as immediately as conversion is there.

I was listening to Beersmith podcast lately and learned something that I should have known but hadn't made the connection in my mind. I think it was the episode with Randy Mosher talking about malts. There was also a podcast with Bamforth talking about malts so it might have been that one...