What is your favorite IPA kit?

There are two that I especially love. They are both IIPAs, with a ton of hops, so I'm sure they exceed your price limit.

Once is the Pliny kit, and one is the Surly Furious clone kit:

http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/the-plinian-legacy-double-ipa-recipe-kit.html

It looks like the Surly kit is out of stock for extract, but here is a link to the AG:
http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/surly-furious-pro-series-all-grain-kit.html


Otherwise, their Dead Ringer is good. That'd be my next choice I think.

 

Maybe this is a dumb question, but why are the IBUs important?

You can have a 1.035 beer with 35 IBUs and it will be BITTER. You can have an 85 IBU 1.100 OG beer, and it won't be bitter.

It's probably impossible to get 100 IBUs in any beer, but it's highly unlikely with extract brewing. Even Pliny the Elder, with calculated IBUs at 250+, was tested and had something like 80 actual IBUs.

If you want something strongly bitter, look at the SG/IBU ratio and that will tell you a better tale that the calculated IBUs.

If you are doing a partial boil (boiling half of the wort and topping up with water), you'd get 50 IBUs, more or less, as a max anyway. * unless you are using Hopshot or something like that, as in the Pliny recipe at Northern brewer.

 

This sounds nitpicky, but I don't mean it to be. Ballast Point claims something like 108 IBUs. One of the reasons calculating IBUs is tricky is because without something like Hopshot, there is a maximum amount of hops oils that can isomerize in wort- generally right about 100 as a maximum. But in actual testing, the actual IBUs tend to be far lower.

What really impacts the perception of bitterness is the SG/IBU ratio.

Using Tongue Buckler as an example, it's 10% ABV so a probable OG is 1.085 or so. With 108 IBUs, that means an OG/SG ratio of 1.080. That's why it's strongly and firmly bitter.

The same IBUs in a beer of 1.100 would be less better, due to that OG/SG ratio (about .890). I hope that makes sense! That's why I"m saying that while IBUs can be useful, in formulating recipes it's more important to look at the OG/SG ratio rather than the calculated IBUs.

Pliny the Elder, which calculates at something like 250 IBUs, was actually measured at something like 85 IBUs but your tongue would never know that!

 

No, not at all- and that's what I'm trying to say (badly, I guess!).

"Bitter" is a combination of things like the number of IBUs, and the OG of the beer and it's about the balance (that SG/IBU ratio I mentioned earlier). but that has nothing at all to do with "hoppiness".

Hoppiness is the amount of hops flavor and aroma in the beer, and that is totally independent from IBUs. You can have a 100 IBU beer that has no hops flavor or aroma at all, but will be very bitter. Or, you can have a 35 IBU beer that is just as bitter if the OG is low.

Hoppiness is a whole different ballgame. Although higher IBU beers can be hoppy as well, the IBU measurement doesn't refer at all to the level of hops flavor in the beer.