Help me brew a great IPA?

All grain, partial mash, all extract??

 

Process is most important. We could give you ideas on a recipe, but the quality of your process will be the biggest determinate of the beer.

If your all grain;

80% Maris Otter
10% Rye
5% Honey or corn sugar
5% Carapils

5 ml Hopshot @ 60
1 oz Columbus @30
1 oz Amarillo @30
1 oz Crystal at whirlpool
1 oz Calypso at whirlpool
1 oz Columbus at whirlpool
1 oz Amarillo at whirlpool
1 oz Crystal dry hop x 4 days
1 oz Calypso dry hop x 4 days
1 oz Columbus dry hop x 3 days
1 oz Amarillo dry hop x 3 days

Clean yeast, Wyeast 1056, make appropriate yeast starter. If your brewing a double ipa, you'll want at least 2 L starter, aerate well, ferment cooler around 68 F

 

I'll tell you right now, your best IPA will come by changing your boil half / top off half with water process to full boil. Split your full wort into 2 or even 3 pots, and boil them all, instead of using one pot and topping off. You need to split up the hops proportional to the amount of wort boiling in each pot. So if you use two pots, 3 gallons and 2 gallons, you'd need to use 60% by weight of your hops in the 3 gallon pot, 40% in the 2-gallon pot. It doesn't have to be EXACT but try to get the split and proportionality fairly close.

Process is everything, the recipe is nearly incidental. Fermentation temperature control, pitching temperature, fast cooling of wort (do you have a wort chiller?), and sanitation can be added to "full boil" as far as your best IPA goes.

Don't base your decision to use / not use crystal malt and/or sugar on hyperventilation, nor on panicked cries of woe from extreme west-coast-only IPA or it isn't even beer and the world's about to end type advocates.

But do have a reason for what you decide, even if that reason is "because I wanted to try it and see how it came out." If your process is good, the recipe will just be a minor detail.

Do toss a metric butt-ton of hops in there tho. That's pretty much implied.

 

I was looking through this thread a little bit this week:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/what-is-your-best-ipa-dbl-ipa-recipe.58141/

National Homebrew day is coming up and my LHBS is cutting costs for a recipe by 50% if you take your gear up there and brew on site.

 

Gravitas:

7.5# NW Pale Ale Malt
2.5# Munich malt (9L)
1# Wheat Malt
1/2# Carastan 30
1/2# sugar
Bitter Chinook 48 IBUs
Centennial, Mosaic, Simcoe late...DH similar
Chico or English dry strain

one of my favorites

 

I'd be doing a half batch of IIPA.

 

Do you want lots of alcohol or lots of hops? You don't have to do both to get one.

Totally agree with half batch full boil vs 5 gallon batch that you top off with water.

 

I used Maris Otter in my last batch of IPA, and to tell the truth, I think I'm going back to plain ol' 2-row next time. There are plenty of brews that MO in place of 2-row will give great results, but I think it almost muddled up the flavors.
Next time, I'll go with something like:
11.5lb 2 row,
.5lb Crystal 40 (maybe 30, depending...)
for my grist,
and probably a similar hop blend:
1.5oz homegrown Newport at 60
.66oz each Mosaic, Falconers Flight and Citra at 10, 5 and flameout.
dryhop with 2oz cascade.

 

My advice would be to refine this set of statements. I'm having a hard time understanding just what you want here. "Well-balanced" and "punched in the face" aren't phrases that seem to make sense together. Nor are "drinkable on a hot summer day" and "as high an ABV as possible".

Personally, my house IPA aims to be full of hop flavor and aroma, without being overly bitter; and something I can drink a couple pints of without being hammered. As such, I target around 6% ABV, go heavy on the late and dry hops, and a modest amount of crystal malts to temper bitterness.

 

Some of your criteria, as already mentioned, seem to be a bit incompatible. But you did list these four beers. Are you looking for a clone of one of them?