[Jeff M]

Hop Extract gives a nice smooth bitterness without the sideeffect of green flavors at this amounts.  Id suggest using the extract.  You can buy a 100g tin at Yakima for 20 bucks, and buy some Leur Lock syringes and make about 20 hopshots yourself for a fraction of the price.  There are quite a few hard to find beers that use the hopshots, including both Pliny Recipes.

http://www.yakimavalleyhops.com/product_p/extractco2cans.htm

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=leur+lock&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Aleur+lock

Cheers,
Jeff

[HoosierBrew]

So what do people think about the hopshots? use them? use a high alpha hop instead?

I can't speak to this recipe in particular, but my feeling is that you don't need them - especially at the homebrew scale. Even for a high-gravity wort, you don't need more than an ounce or two of high alpha hops to max out your IBU threshold. Compared to the amount of hops you'll be using for your flavor and aroma additions, that's nothing.

Personally, I'd prefer to have a bit more control over the sharpness/smoothness of my bittering addition (Magnum vs. Chinook, for example) by taking control of the hop variety selection.

Having said that, there's absolutely nothing wrong with using Hop Shot. There is kind of a "cool factor" in adding your bittering addition of murky resin using a syringe. If you like to brew big IPA's you should at least try it out once and see what you think. The results are just fine. Bittering is a smooth-to-moderate in quality (sharper than Magnum, smoother than Nugget) in my experience.

I agree. Like Eric said, an oz or two of high AA hops for bittering as compared to the volume of late hops is pretty inconsequential IMO. Nothing wrong with giving the hop shot a try though.

[denny]

So what do people think about the hopshots? use them? use a high alpha hop instead?

I did some beta testing fro NB when they were bein g developed.  I used them maybe 5 times and was kinda underwhelmed.  Maybe they've improved them since then.