Thanks to everyone.....been following this thread and now I can report a successful ( although limited qty) brew.....thought I'd give everyone the blow by blow of my experience.....
So after a long and anxious process, we finally did the definitive side by side (blind) taste test. The following is a summary of events over the course of creating our Heady Topper clone. To begin we used Vegan's #4 recipe, but no wheat......reading the Kimmich comment that he avoided it.
April 6 - Single infusion mash, at 153degs for one hour. Yielded 7 gallons of wort. Boiled for an hour, adding 10ml of hop shots at the start and with 5 minutes left added the Simcoe and Apollo. At flameout added the Turbinado. Cooled until temp was 170 degrees and then added the "steeping" hops per recipe. Whirlpooled (by hand) for 30 minutes, keeping the temp between 150 and 160 degs. Noticed dark brown flecks swirling around....it was undisolved turbinado! Transferred to carboy, yield now down to 4.5 gallons! Original gravity only 1.70. Aerated for 10 minutes, pitched 800 mls Yeast Bay Vermont Ale yeast (after 2 step ups).... Temperature was 68 degs...
April 7th - Fermentation started, going strong after 12 hours. Temp held at 68 thanks to a cool closet I use for fermtation.
April 11th - fermentation slowing down, SG check, at 1.021, aroma is definitely there, even before dry hopping. Held temps in the fermenter between 64-68 degrees.
April 13th - Fermentation really slow, checked SG, still 1.02+, decided to ramp up temperature to 70 degrees. Used space heater (not a good solution) and with constant monitoring kept it within 5 degrees over a few days.
April 17th - No change in SG.....tried rouseing the yeast a few days ago, no impact, added packet of SA-05 yesterday, no impact. Looks like a stuck fermentation, but I decided to continue...
April 20th - Added hops for the first dry hop step. Moved the fermenter to the basement where it's a constant 60 degrees.
April 28th - Racked to secondary, added second round of dry hops. The volume has now been reduced to less than 4 gallons!
May 5th - Bottled, yielded 27 12 oz bottles, the amount of hops in solution was amazing, eventually clogging the bottling tip, so I dumped a good amount out. Final Specific Gravity was 1.020.....
May 13th - The Test! We live in Vermont so it's easy to get Heady, as long as you go on Monday morning to the local store that's graced to distribute it..... Bottom line, my clone was somewhat darker, the head was weaker (it did have adequate carbonation, mouth feel was fine) but the flavor was SPOT On! Only difference was a slightly more bitter finish that I think may have to do with less ABV since I came up short on the SG. Also my clone was definitely cloudy, but since I never drank Heady in glass ( great marketing job by Alchemist, you don't see the cloudy) it turns out it was almost as cloudy.
A lot of angst....but worth it!