Hop selection for DIPA

Hello all:

I'm formulating a recipe for my first DIPA.  I feel that I have a good handle on the malt bill but would like some opinions on the hop combination.  Right now, I'm thinking about a Centennial/Chinook/Simcoe combo spaced at 60 min/45 min/25 min/5 min to get good even ratios of bittering, flavor and aroma across the board. 

To be more specific - do people feel that for bittering such a high IBU beer that you should just pick one high alpha bad boy and load up the front of the boil?  Is there any benefit to "blend" the hops across the boil as I've laid this out?

I'd dry hop with something like Amarillo to punch up the finish.  At any rate, the recipe as it stands is below in case any hop heads out there care to offer an opinion!  Thanks to all in advance.

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5.5 gallon All-Grain

Est Original Gravity: 1.077
Est Final Gravity: 1.013
Estimated Alcohol by Vol: 8.6%
Bitterness: 88.6 IBU
Est Color: 11.8 SRM

14 lbs 3.3 oz Pale Malt (2 Row) US
8.3 oz         Rye Malt
3.6 oz         Chocolate Malt
1 lbs 10.6 oz Table Sugar

0.30 oz Centennial - Boil 60.0 min
0.30 oz Chinook - Boil 60.0 min
0.30 oz Simcoe Boil 60.0 min
0.30 oz Centennial - Boil 45.0 min
0.30 oz Chinook - Boil 45.0 min
0.30 oz Simcoe - Boil 45.0 min
0.30 oz Centennial - Boil 25.0 min
0.30 oz Chinook - Boil 25.0 min
0.30 oz Simcoe - Boil 25.0 min
0.30 oz Centennial - Boil 5.0 min
0.30 oz Chinook - Boil 5.0 min
0.30 oz Simcoe - Boil 5.0 min
1.00 oz Amarillo Gold - Dry Hop

My $0.02 on DIPAs:  You want a firm bittering at a rather high level, but the emphasis should be on the hop flavors. 

The malt backbone should be just enough to get some diversity of malt flavors.  My DIPAs have featured a blend of base malts (2-row and MO) with a little bit of Vienna or Munich malt to give some complexity.  A bit of wheat or rye may also give some additional malt flavors to keep that initial taste interesting enough.

As for the hops, my DIPAs have been pretty simple in terms of hop additions, especially since they are single hop (mosaic) or dual hop (mosaic and citra).  I do a healthy first wort hop and 60 minute addition to give about 30% of the IBU content.  Next, I do late hopping with an addition at 5 minutes to match the 30% of IBU of the initial hopping, maybe a few % points more.  Lastly I heavily load the whirlpool hops steeping for 40 minutes and 20 minutes (that is 40 minutes with another hop addition at 20 minutes of steeping).  Next is a healthy dry hop at nearly the same rate of hop addition as the whirlpool hopping.  I never thought of much bitterness from the dry hopping until I started doing some dry hopped SMaSH recipes where I added a gram of hops into some of the bottles when bottling.  The difference in perceived bitterness between the dry hopped and unhopped bottles was huge in my experience.

There are a lot of other ways to tackle the bitterness for a DIPA and I'm sure others will chime in.  A local brewery does a DIPA 'SMaSH' every season and uses a very high initial bittering addition and most of their DIPAs are very hard to drink:  way too harsh and mouth puckering bitterness with poor hop flavors and aromas coming through.

Sorry for the delay in respond, but thanks SO much for your insight.  I had just been reading about first wort hoping so I'm going to give that a try on this.  On your whirlpool - I don't currently have the ability to do a whirlpool.  Any suggestion on an alternative?  Steep some hops for 20 minutes in the hot wort post boil before introducing the wort chiller?

My "whirlpool" is simply stirring up until I get a good vortex and then adding the hops in and covering the kettle.  It kind of steeps after the first 5 to 10 minutes and the wort stops moving.  I repeat when doing a stepped whirlpool, stirring again after the 20 minutes and adding the second batch of hops.

Great tip, again. Thanks! Happy brewing.