A quick update on my latest starter experiment:

The morning after making the starter there was a very thin layer of krausen on the beer, which means some yeast stuck around in the bottle and went to town on the wort.  That night the krausen had dropped so I put the bottle in the fridge to crash cool it and get the suspended yeast to drop out.  I don’t really know if that was a good idea or not, but I did it so there’s no use crying over it now.  This evening I decanted the beer in the bottle, which left a small layer of yeast at the bottom - not a lot but definitely more than what was there before.  I added 2 cups of fresh 1.035 wort to that (made using the coffee grinder / thermos method, which I’m going to stick with) and shook the crap out of it again.  With any luck, I’ll have a nice cake at the bottom of the bottle sometime tomorrow and the whole starter can be pitched into a batch of IPA or something.

More updates to come.