I noticed the strangest thing from my recent dry stout - easily twice the amount of slurry as I usually find in my beers - and dense, thick slurry at that. Then I thought for a second and realized that this beer, aside from its color and presumed acidity, was as close as I could get to brewing a 6 gal starter. The beer tastes fine so far - I haven't had a chance to taste it carbonated, though. My thinking is that, if someone did need to build up a TON of yeast for a club brew day or a giant batch - brewing a starter-ale could be a welcome alternative to building 10 different starters or buying ten packs of dry yeast.
The SG was 1.043
I pitched about a pint of week-old slurry (a lot, I know)
This beer was the first to utilize my drill-powered aeration device, and was thus far more aerated than my previous beers
This was the first beer I brewed to blow out of the bucket since I started using anti-foam
Oddly, fermentation began at 56F and rose to 60F. I ramped it up to 68 after fermentation had slowed down considerably. I don't build my starters cooler than ambient usually, but this particular yeast strain does seem to like it cold. If I were going to intentionally build a starter-beer (that could be consumed the day of a brew day if the beer was kegged and carbonated the night before), I think I would probably let it ferment slightly warmer than usual (66-68F for 1056, for example), but I am not sure this would be necessary. Thoughts?