Apollo is at 18% or more... he's good.
I think you completely misunderstood my post.
It's not a matter of whether he's getting an appropriate number of IBUs in the recipe. It is about the relative quantities/timing of each of those hops additions and the potential variation in IBUs that could result.
A tiny amount of very high alpha hops, combined with a huge quantity of late addition hops means you will probably not be able to reproduce that exact hop profile and IBU level again when you make the beer next time.
If you are a homebrewer that wants to be able to repeat your successful beers, you don't want tiny errors in measurement or timing to have such a huge effect in the way the beer comes out. However, the way the recipe is designed pretty much guarantees that.
EDIT: Professional brewers making production batches have really good reasons to prefer super high alpha hops like Apollo, etc. They use less hops to get a similar bitterness level, which leaves a lot less chance of pulling out vegetal flavors from too much plant material. However, these guys are pitching quantities on the order of pounds of hops into their batches. Measurement error isn't nearly as big of a factor.
Maybe you guys are using different scales than I do, but the typical scales I see at LHBS stores and that I use at home is
this one. On mine, the absolute smallest amount it will display a change in weight for when measuring hops is about .02oz, and if I add/remove those same pieces it actually doesn't register changes reliably until the quantity is more like .06-.08oz. So even if you plan for .5oz of bittering hops, you might be putting in as much as .58oz or as little as .42oz in any given batch. For a 60 minute addition with 18% AA hops, that represents nearly 14 IBUs of variation. Now, take that same problem and put 2oz of high alpha hops at the very end of the boil.
Here you have a variation in timing. Say that the end of the boil length can vary by about +/- 2 minutes. Maybe it takes shorter or longer for the wort to cool at flameout due to the weather being a bit windier or colder, etc. Maybe you just looked at your watch when it just ticked over to 2:34 to time the hops, but didn't turn off the flame until just a second before 2:46. Whatever. In this case, you are looking at a variation of just over 12 IBUs just from that potential timing difference at the end of the boil.
So with those variations combined, you could be drinking a beer that is anywhere between 40 and 66 actual IBUs (not actual values) when it's done. Now suppose you make the BEST IPA EVAR with this recipe, and you want to make it again. How close do you think you might be to the original batch? You might get pretty close, or it might end up tasting more like a pale ale instead of an IPA.
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