Please Critique My Ipa Recipe (Any Yeast Advice?)

Only my third brew, but I want to make it a dank one. It's a partial-mash IPA I hope to have ready by August. From what I can tell, this is somewhere beween an "ordinary" IPA and a double IPA. I wanted to hop the living bejeezus out of a malty beer. Why the honey? I think it would complement the Centennial hops well. I got the beer munchies and put some honey on an apple while drinking a two hearted ale, and voila. I decided that centennial hops and honey would be awesome together. Try it sometime. Maybe I've had too much Two Hearted and Bastard tonight, but I thought it was tasty. As far as the recipe... here goes:

Fermentables

6 lb Maris Otter
2 lb Munich
1 lb Victory
1 lb Vienna
0.5 lb Honey Malt
0.5 lb Aromatic
0.5 lb Flaked Barley
0.5 lb Crystal 60L
0.25 lb Melanoidin
0.25 lb Special B

4 Extra Light DME
3 Clover Honey

Hops
1.75 oz Magnum (13.4% AA, 60 min)

0.25 oz Citra (11.1% AA, 20 min)
0.25 oz Centennial (10.0% AA, 20 min)

0.5 oz Citra (11.1% AA, 15 min)
0.5 oz Centennial (10.0% AA, 15 min)

0.5 oz Citra (11.1% AA, 10 min)
0.5 oz Centennial (10.0% AA, 10 min)

0.75 oz Citra (11.1% AA, 5 min)
0.75 oz Centennial (10.0% AA, 5 min)

0.75 oz Citra (11.1% AA, 0 min)
0.75 oz Centennial (10.0% AA, 0 min)

Yeast: Nottingham
Single infusion mash: 3.6 gal, 153F, 60 min (~ 1.3 qt / lb grain)
Sparge: 5.4 gal water 170F (1.5x mash volume)
OG: 1.1023
FG: 1.0306
71 IBU
9.4% ABV
6 gal brew volume
I assumed 70% mash efficiency and 70% attenuation in calculating these values.

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I have never made a yeast starter before, but seeing how my OG is above 1.1000, do I need to make one? I think I've been told that at some point before. Or would I be safe pitching two packets of Notty? That seems kinda crude, though. And I think I read that overpitching can be bad (I'm not sure how, though). Also, any special concerns in getting the yeastie beasties to ferment all of the sugar? I've never made a beer that big before and I don't want to have 6 gallons of cloyingly sweet IPA. All input would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you, and stay funky. :fro:

I ran your proposed recipe through ProMash, and here are the numbers it spat out. SG: 1.105 and 99.5 IBU. So I'd say that your gravity is a bit much for your stated ambition of something between an IPA and a double IPA, and "a bit" is me understating things. BJCP guidelines give a range of 1.070 - 1.090 for an IMPERIAL IPA. If you get rid of the DME you get down to 1.075 and 113 IBU, which sounds good number wise, but I'm not so sure as far as the effect of the 3 pounds of clover honey, but I would think it would maybe be alright depending on how fermentable it is, because you need to have some sort of gravity contribution from a non malt source in a big IPA as far as I know (all malt would bring too much non-fermentable material to the party). So except for what effects the honey would have, it sounds good on that end (although I would question that you need that many specialty malts; it seems to be what new guys always do with recipes, but it's homebrewing and you can do whatever you want and I don't think it'll necessarily be a bad thing).

As far as yeast, my first thought would be a big starter with a wyeast 1056 or a white labs WLP 001, but if you don't have the resources to make a starter, than 2 packs of Nottingham (proofed) would definitely work, and you would be in no danger of overpitching (as far as I understand it, it would be very hard to overpitch, and it's better to possibly err on the side of too much yeast, since underpitching would be a worse problem. I have a very high opinion of Nottingham, and I have made some great beer with it. For further questions on pitching rates, I would point you towards the yeast pitching rate calculator that can be found here.