I'm cheap. I picked up a garage sale 2 gallon cooler for a couple bucks. I then steal the ball valve and braided hose from the 10 gallon cooler for test batches.
I fly sparge using a gravity setup in the kitchen. It's liberating not having to haul out the 10 gallon cooler, 10 gallon hot...
This is a recipe I have highly modified from the BYO Kern River Citra IIPA. I've done this one with Citra and Amarillo and was great.
14 lbs 8 oz Great Western Two Row (86.5%)
12.00 oz Crystal 15 (4.5%)
12.00 oz Munich (4.5%)
6.00 oz White Wheat Malt (2.3%)
6.00 oz Honey Malt (2.3%)...
I use wlp299 for IPA's. In my opinion it is a brings a nice peach aroma to the party. It seems to knock out some off the bittering and does not floc quite as well as wlp001.
Fermentation temps can go to 70 in my setup which works for swamp cooling in the summer.
I did win a club brewing...
Unless your brew is releasing rhino farts, the smell, or should I say aroma, is not that bad. Now the constant bubbling of a blow off tube during active fermentation could drive someone crazy, if in the same room.
My boss is Carl from Slingblade who takes over all projects when they get interesting. Interesting in this case is public facing. He is the worst micromanager ever.
I've done two IPA's with 3 oz of hops steaping at 170 for 30 minutes and the result was great. I will continue to do hops stands for all my IPA / IIPA 's. Both were new recipes so I can't compare to not doing a stand.
While more than half way through fly sparging, turn the heat on low under the brew kettle. If you time it right your kettle will come to a boil as the last of the sparge is done.
That saves me time and maybe a little gas.
I am truley lazy and dry hopped leaf and pellets without a bag. i even cold crashed with the hops in for a few more days. No grassy flavors.
This beer gets better with age. It gets less grapefruit and more balanced every day. Unfortunetly this keg will kick soon. May have to tinker with...
I think this recipe tastes good as is. You can boost the gravity but you will also need to boost bitterness to keep the beer balanced. BeerSmith can help you with the calculation. I'd do it for you but I'm at work.