I'm giving this a go but living here in central Europe the hop choices are somewhat limited.
Also, I plugged the original hops into beersmith and the IBU was way low, like 35 ish (UNLESS I set it to a 5 gallon boil). I can only boil about 3 gallons so I find myself going crazy on the hops just to get to 80IBU.
Here's what I've put together with liberal substitutions and working with hops I already have or that I can easily order:
3oz magnum @ 15% for 60 minutes
1oz northern brewer @ 10% for 30 minutes
1/2oz perle @ 9% for 15 minutes
1/2oz cascade @ 5% for 15 minutes
1/2oz perle 9% for 5 minutes
1/2oz cascade @ 5% for 5 minutes
1oz perle dry hopped 7 days
1oz cascade dry hopped 7 days
This seems like a lot of hops especially given the recipes in this thread which seem to come from a partial boil. Am I missing something here or was the original recipe based on a full 5 gallon boil?
Yep, I've always made my recipes 5-gallons. Technically, this could qualify as a triple IPA, given the high IBU's, but the alcohol % is slightly lower than the socially accepted average of >=10% (and I'm hoping the lower alcohol would allow some residual sweetness to tame some of those hops...).
If you have some spare cash and a Mac, I'd highly recommend buying Beer Alchemy. That program makes the recipe formulation process as easy as possible, and it also allows you to scale down ingredients by percentages if you do smaller batches. I couldn't say what programs are good for PC's, but I'm sure someone on here could recommend one.
