You'll have to share your recipe. You've got it set to private I think.

 

i always clean my brewware with sodium percarboate *any type of bree cleaner before i soak it in phosphoric acid to knock off any remaining nasties and also creates a acidic surface bad bacteria are less.likely to harbour.

you may have got a lot of air mixed in with your beer when you transfered to secondary and bottling bucket and then into bottles this can greatly diminish hop aroma / flavour real quick.

 

Let one sit out and go flat, see if the carbonation is hiding some of your flavors.

 

Is there any way you can take a quick class at your lhbs or watch someone else brew? I think there's something that we're missing by not seeing the brew in action.
My lhbs offers all grain and extract intro classes for about 20 bucks every so often. They're a good real world intro instead of just reading about it

 

One error I see is the recipe. No, nothing wrong with what I see aside from what you're calling a pale ale is well into the IPA range, it's just a bit too ambitious. See, IPAs are tough for experienced brewers. Getting hop flavor into a beer and keeping it there is one of the reasons I don't do many really hoppy beers. And you have dry-hop contact times of 28 days total (don't know if they're sequential or concurrent). That's too long. Start with something more simple, a 20-IBU 1.050 blonde. It'll tell you a whole lot more about what you're doing than a 65 IBU IPA. SMASH is a good place to start: Extract and steep. Aromatic needs to be mashed! Do something really simple, a kit, even, before attempting something that stymies experienced homebrewers.

 

Was the 14 day dry hop a part of the recipe? I can't say that I am the best maker of IPAs, but the best I've made usually had a 5 day dry hop.

 

No need to secondary there is one variable gone...

 

+1 on "no secondary." I just started avoiding a secondary transfer (except for very strong beers) in the last year or so and it's a lifesaver because even the best of us get oxygen into the green beer when we transfer it. Also saves time and that's the biggest reason I'm happy about skipping it.

 

I just started foregoing “Secondary” as well. Especially now that I’m using the Ss BrewBucket!

 

At our scale and on general homebrew drinking timelines I suspect oxygen is wildly overblown as an issue.

 

Yep, people can't tell the difference. LoDo sounds like magic to me, do all these steps exactly or your beer is DOOMED. I find good pH control and pitch rate do more for my light lagers than any degree of fear of O2. But some have had different experiences or we wouldn't be having this discussion. Bottom line, learn, make your own decisions, experiment....

 

Keep in mind confirmation bias is a very powerful thing. As is priming someone to come to a conclusion in advance.

 

Just curious...did you actually steep 5 lbs for a 5 gallon batch? I'm trying to imagine the results and can't quite come up with an estimation. A pound or two is usually enough. And Aromatic? As far as I know, that's a type of fairly heavy melanoidin malt. Since I really don't like that flavor, it makes me cringe a little.
This is just a thought, but did you confirm pre-boil gravity and is it possible that it was higher than you think? With the right steep in that sort of malt, you could end up with higher efficiency and any significant difference in boil it can lower the IBU's. The recipe is not only out of range for a Pale, but actually up into the Double IPA range, it ends up on the low end of the range for hoppiness there. Since the steep is so large and the beer is so dark and malty, any diminution of hop character is going to make it seem like there's not enough. I don't care for over-hopped beers and I've had DIPAs in the 100 IBU range that didn't register as too hoppy because of the huge, dense malt character and flavor. Something worth thinking about.
If you're concerned about your methodology, maybe try something simple and relatively light that will be unlikely to hide any missteps or miscalculations. A simple Blonde Ale or actual Pale with a pretty bold hop presence might yield results that are more encouraging for you.