Cascade, Citra, & Nelson Sauvin Double IPA

It looks a bit like
hoppy milk?

My desire is to make a strongly hopped IPA to get ready for spring, and to give brewing hoppy beers another try now that my small batch process has been refined a bit. My model comes from a beer I had before my trip to California. I enjoyed my can of Heady Topper from The Alchemist Brewery; it has a punch you in the face hop aroma, great hop flavor, and lower than expected bitterness.

I've read many secrets to making a great hoppy beer: one secret is hop bursting, another is recipe formulation, and the other is an aroma rest. Hop bursting is the term given to moving most of your hop schedule  into the last 20 minutes of the boil. An aroma rest is allowing the wort to cool naturally for a time after adding the flame out hops but before you engage the chiller. The final piece of the puzzle is a great recipe. My go to source on this topic is Vinnie from Russian River. He invented the DIPA! Following his tips in recipe formation is like following a Van Gogh paint by numbers.

(read more after the break.)

I want to boost the strength of this without increasing the final gravity so I am going to mix a measure of honey into my normal recipe. I am going to put a lot of hops into the end of this brew. I've hop bursted before so I am going to try an aroma rest in this batch instead. I suspect I'll try combining the techniques next. If I were to scale this up to 5 gallons it would require a lot of hops. I would probably add some warrior in for bittering because I think it's a smooth bitter.

Specifications:
Boil Size: 1.5 gal
Batch Size (fermenter): 1.0 gal
Estimated OG: 1.072 SG
Estimated Color: 7.6 SRM
Estimated IBU: 84.1 IBUs

Recipe:
2 lbs Pale Malt (2 Row) US (2.0 SRM) 72.7 %
2.0 oz Caramel/Crystal Malt - 40L (40.0 SRM) 4.5 %
2.0 oz Carapils (Briess) (1.5 SRM) 4.5 %
1.00 oz Cascade [5.50 %] - Boil 60.0 min 84.1 IBUs
0.75 oz Nelson Sauvin [12.00 %] - Aroma Steep 30.0 min   0.0 IBUs
0.25 oz Citra [12.00 %]- Aroma Steep 30.0 min 0.0 IBUs
0.3 pkg Safale American (DCL/Fermentis #US-05)
8.0 oz Honey (3.0 SRM) 18.2 % @ High Kraussen
0.25 oz Nelson Sauvin [12.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days 0.0 IBUs
0.75 oz Citra [12.00 %] - Dry Hop 7.0 Days 0.0 IBUs

Mash Schedule:
Saccharification Add 6.37 qt of water at 155.7 F 148.0 F 90 min
Mash Out Heat to 168.0 F over 7 min 168.0 F 10 min

Brew Day:
Something I am learning about I'd like to share with you. Hops absorb a lot of wort. I'd say they absorb at least several fluid ounces per ounce of hops; I have no scientific measurements of course. As seen in the picture here the hops gained quite a bit of volume. I boiled some top up water and filled the carboy up. I didn't get an accurate OG reading so we'll see how this one ends up.