Solstice IIPA

I've really been behind with brewing this year.  Last year I brewed 18 batches, roughly twice a month.  This year I've only brewed twice, once in February, once in March.  With our baby arriving at the end of June or earlier (more than likely), I need to get a few batches cranked out so I have some in the pipeline while we take care of the infant.  My friend and bandmate Nick was really interested in helping brew again.  He helped me brew one of my smoked brown ales last fall.  I was thinking about doing another double IPA for the summer solstice, and he had been bringing a few dank DIPA's to practice lately so I suggested that's what we brew.  He was down, so we went with it.  This was also the second batch I'd be doing a water adjustment.  Feeling much more comfortable with this now.

BATCH #45:
16# 2 Row pale malt
12 oz crystal 40 (wanted to use a pound but that was all I had left)
1# honey malt (originally used honey, but had this on hand... not exactly the same, but whatever)
1 oz Centennial (60 - wanted 2.5 oz but again, this is what I had on hand)
1.5 oz Citra (60)
1 oz Amarillo (15 - was going with 1/2 oz but these were reaching a year old so I just used a whole oz)
1 oz Citra (0)
White Labs WLP 250 - Rebel Brewer, propogated and donated by my friend Brendan

5/31/12 - BREWNIGHT:
First time using my new Barley Crusher - fucking awesome... until my drill battery died.  But even the hand cranking was way easier than the old phil mill.
Was able to get this thing cranked out in 5 hours tonight.
Single infusion, 152F for 60 minutes.
Boil for 60, turned into 90 after an early boil over and added a little more runnnings.
Chilling took fooooorrrevvvveeerr... 2 effing hours.  That was using a pump and a giant bucket of ice.  Only was able to get it down to 70F, which I was fine with.  I dropped the whole thing in a cooler with chilled water in it and it dropped to 68F.

6/6/12 - FERMENTATION CHECK:
This took forever to get going.  Even today, one week after brewing, its still chugging along.  I decided to remove the carboy from the water/cooler because I really could not get an accurate temperature reading.  Makes me want a thermowell.  I drew a sample to check the gravity, temp was surprisingly low at 63.5F.  No fucking wonder it wouldn't ferment at first, shite.  Gravity was 1.026, so right around where I expected it judging by the activity going on in the carboy.  First taste - holy niceness... nice and bitter, flavorful, citrusy, piney, very very nice.  This will definitely be a good batch.  Probably won't need to dry hop this much either, the flavor alone is worth it.  Maybe I should dry hop half of it or something.  This will certainly be a delectable addition to our solstice feast.  I also wonder if drinking a small sample of this right now, with the yeast being so active, has any health benefits... kind of like a living food like yogurt or kim chi.  Hmmm.  Might be worth investigating what beers would be good at this stage... kellerbiers are a good example... being served "turbid".