I'm cooking up my candi syrup right now. It's actually kind of fun. Anyway, I'll be brewing next week and had a couple questions. First, what does brew like a monk have to say about whirlfloc or irish moss or stuff like that. I always use whirlfloc but for this beer I'm considering not. Firstly, it will be so dark I doubt it would make a difference in clarity, secondly, there will be yeast in the bottle anyway to cloud it, and lastly, I always feel like it reduces head retention when I use it. Anyway, thats question one.
My second question has to do with pitching rates. The Mr. Malty pitching rate calculator says I need about a 2 liter starter with 2 smack packs. I only have one smack pack and was just going to step it up once. How do I calculate the volume of the first and second steps? I'd like to slightly underpitch, in order to bring out more of the yeast characteristics, but not underpitch by so much that attenuation suffers. Thanks!