Crash Chilled

I was reading a Pliny the Younger recipe (I got Russian River literally 4 blocks from my house :]) from themadfermentastionist.com and in the 'notes' section, the author states that they made a 2.5qt starter and then "crash chilled" it 37F three days later. Clue me in here on what there talking about when making a starter, i know aerating is important (not using an airlock on the flask?) but is chilling prior to pitching important? That seems redundant???

 

It drops the yeast out of suspension so that you can decant the beer off the starter and pitch "starter-beer free" yeast

 

I feel like a moron here but decant the beer off the starter? I feel like this is a grammatical mishap I'm having on my part in not understanding what you mean here! :S Sorry friend!

 

When you cold crash your starter yeast goes dormant an precipitates to the bottom of your Erlenmayer or whatever your are using from your starter, onbrew day, take your flask out of the frigde and GENTLY pour the beer on top (most of it at least) leaving the yeast sediment in the bottom undisturbed, that´s waht he meant, live a little beer (just a little) that will protect your yeast, let it get to room temp, a couple of swirls and voila you are ready. This is done specially with big starters for big beers, most of the time I just pitch the starter at high krausen and that´s it.