IPA recipe critique

I think that's a pretty high FG for a DIPA. Maybe mash lower, substitute some table sugar to help dry it out, and 05 instead of S-04.

 

I'd suggest cutting your carapils and caramunich in half and upping the base malt.

2.5 oz bittering addition seems a bit excessive. You can shoot for 40-50 IBUs with your bittering addition and then get the rest of your bitterness from large late hop additons. I'd bitter with something else like Columbus or Magnum and move all that Simcoe to FO with the Citra. It wouldn't be a bad idea to move that 30 min Simcoe to later in the boil as well. You may want to consider putting half of your FO hops in right when you come off the heat and then add the other half when you're under 170-180 degrees.

 

I would dial back the carapils, caramunich and honey malt a bit since the sweetness of those may hide some of the bitterness you are looking for. Speaking of which, what kind of bitterness are you looking for? Something like Stone IPA which comes across harsh (but good) to me or something like Two Hearted which seems a little "smoother". Are you looking for a lot of hop flavor or mostly bitterness?

 

You are asking your hops to compete with a seriously-bodied beer. As alanforbeer says, ditch some grain for sugar, this will not make your beer sweet . . . rather it will make it drier and give your hops a chance to compete. I would target a 1.012'ish FG. My other suggestion is to use Vikeman's water profile for IPAs, available in Brewcipher (my software crashes), but if asked nicely he might post here. There is a reason world-class IPAs didn't originate in Pilsen or Munich: Water - - - the Last Frontier.

 

I use corn sugar up to 10% of fermentables, although cane sugar is chemically identical.

Here's a pretty good blueprint to follow for a DIPA (Pliny clone). Note this also has an aggressive dry hop schedule. I admit to no shame in copying this (several times) as the results speak for themselves.

 

That much Simcoe at 60 and 30 mins should make a very bitter beer if you dial back the caramel malts. I would try it with just the honey malt. Also, @PortLargo's comment about water is definitely worth paying attention to. Do you know what your water looks like? Have you tried distilled water and adding minerals to get the profile you need for a beer like this?

 

Did you lower the honey malt as well? You've got quite a bit in there, that would be enough to mask some of the bitterness alone.

 

+1 on ditching the 04. The Chico yeast will express the hops probably better than any other yeast.

Edit: apparently too late on this post.

 

You are definitely doing something right with that FG...nice job. Hopefully, the temp control was there also