Ironcity, I like what you have planned. I love IPAs as well. I am not an expert, but you sound like me a few months ago when I was doing my second batch. Let me first say: Welcome to the addiction. Do not let your first 1 to 3 batches turn you off from home brewing. I just recently dumped half my first batch out, it tasted so much worse than my 4th batch it was unreal. I only use my 2nd batch for cooking (IE beer batter, chocolate cake with stout, etc) as it is just no good to drink... I made a Coopers kit using only dextrose. YEEECH.
Anyway, this might sound a bit odd... but my third batch was a Coopers IPA. It actually turned out really good, I am drinking one now. Here is what I did.
Buy 1 Coopers IPA Kit(make sure its not expired, this is important), 4 pounds Light Dry Malt Extract, and 6-12 ounces of bittering hops. What kind of hops? Thats up to you.
Bring 3 gallons of water to a boil. Turn off heat, add 2 pounds of your Dry Malt Extract (called DME from here on out), stir to dissolve completely. Add
1/6 of your hops (IE if you bought 6 ounces, add 1 ounce).
Turn on heat, bring to boil. BE VERY careful about boil overs, watch like a hawk. After awhile, the foam should subside. Stir occasionally, keep boiling for 30 mins. (FYI, when the foam subsizes and you see little 'floaties' in the boil, this is called HOT BREAK... a good term to remember)
At 30 mins boil, add another 1/6 of your hops. Keep boiling.
At 15 Boil, add another 1/6 of your hops, turn off the heat, and the rest of your DME. Your boil will end since the temp has dropped, stir to dissolve all the dme completely. (FYI there is a good reason to split up your DME additions like this. Just search for "Late Malt Extract Addition" on the web or this forum, for more info")
Turn on the heat, bring back to boil. Boil for 15 more mins.
At the last minute, just before 15 minutes expires, add another 1/6 of your hops, and if you like strong beer, add either 1/2 pound of honey, or 1/2 pound of brown sugar. If you do not like super strong beer, skip the honey/sugar. Add another 1/6 of your hops now.
Turn off heat, and take your pot and place it in your sink. Fill the sink up with cold water, and ice. You want to cool it down as fast as possible. Cool for about 30 mins covered. Then, dump into your fermenter topping up to 5 gallons with cold water.
As long as your wort is not too hot, add (pitch) your yeast now. You can use the kit yeast, but store bought ale yeast is MUCH better, just make sure its fresh and not expired.
Refrigerate the last 2/6th of your hops in a sealed bag.
After 1 week in your primary, if you are someone who liked to rack into a secondary do it now. Now, remember how you added 4/6ths of your hops earlier? Well, now you add the last 2/6ths of them. This is your dry hop addition.
Doing the above made an AWESOME Ipa beer for me. The only thing I would do next time, would be to steep some Crystal Malts 20Lish. For you, just starting out, dont worry about it. Here is the best advice I could give you, and the best advice you should listen to: go to this website and read through the information:
http://www.howtobrew.com/intro.html
That web book will help you understand the basics. The guy gets pretty in depth dont try to absord all of it. But, the next time somone says something about brewing you dont understand you can use the book as a reference. Thats how I am now doing partial mash using grains... and loving every minute of it. Cheers!