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Aging it for a while at 68 will let the remaining suspended yeast clean up some of their own byproducts. If you drop the temp to 40 they're going to go dormant and do nothing.

You should ideally keep your starter close to your fermentation temperature while it's actually fermenting. Once it's done, you can put it in the fridge to cause the yeast to flocculate so that you can decant off the hooch before pitching the yeast, but some people don't do this. If it's an...

A couple heat sticks [1, 2] will be lots cheaper and will put out much more heat. I very much doubt the electric grill will get the job done.

Most important question is, what yeast are you using? In general, it's probably useful for you to tell us whose kit, and possibly give us an idea of the ingredients as well.

Also, if you're like me you can sample the starter hooch to feel a bit closer to your pets. (Seriously, I've had some Belgian yeast strains make relatively drinkable hooch!)

On Saturday I pitched a culture that had been sleeping in my fridge for two weeks, and the fermentation was going within an hour. You should be A-OK :)

If you step it up, you should definitely re-aerate. In fact, you should be aerating as much as possible, ideally continuously via a stir bar and loose-fitting cover on the jug. Excess oxygen in a starter gets you more, healthier yeast.

Most stir bars are permanent magnets, but if your stir plate's magnet is strong enough you can sometimes get away without it.

As it says in your link, temperature-induced degradation varies by magnet type. NdFeB magnets demagnetize around 80C and are pretty susceptible to permanent magnetization loss. By contrast, most AlNiCo magnets have Curie temperatures upwards of 500C! (NdFeB tend to be substantially stronger...

+1. By keeping them in the same environment they'll see in your fermenter, you will be sure to select for yeast that will do what you want them to rather than mutations that happen to eat sucrose or dextrose really well. I boil in a 2L Erlenmeyer because it's one less thing to clean. I use an...

I started mine about 60 hours ahead; 36 hours for growth phase, followed by 24 hours in the fridge to compact the cake. I had serious blowoff less than 6 hours after pitching. I forgot to mention in my initial post that I kept my fermentation spot on 70 because WLP001 doesn't really throw...

This isn't actually an answer to your question, but it might help you make your decision: I just took a hydro sample of my Pliny clone as I added the dry hops, and WLP001 took it from 1.077 to 1.011 in 17 days. I made up a 1200mL starter from a WLP001 vial, cold crashed, decanted the starter...

That's odd, every Lagunitas bottle I've purchased has been pop-top; in fact, they're identical to the Sierra Nevada bottles. I balk at buying screwtop bottles for exactly the same reason as you, which is why I'm so sure that the case of Little Sumpin' Sumpin' I just got doesn't have them.

boss429, I'm not sure where your skepticism is coming from, but the chemistry of Na2S2O5 or K2S2O5 reducing NH2Cl is relatively straightforward and thus not likely to be a discussed thoroughly in any recent peer reviewed papers. As others have said, textbooks or other publications on water...

Remember, fermentation is an exothermic process, so your ice will melt faster in the first few days of fermentation when things are going really fast. Your build looks really solid; I hope it works out well for you.

It won't be a problem. You pitched a volume that's <5% of your batch, so you've already attenuated any off flavors by a factor of >20 (OK, it's not as if taste perception is a linear thing...). Beyond that, the yeast are busily reproducing and throwing all manner of off flavor compounds into...

Putting an airlock on a stirred starter is counter-productive. The stir plate does two things: keeps the yeast in suspension and continually oxygenates the wort, which encourages healthier and faster reproduction. Given that your yeast is already a low flocculator (i.e., #1 isn't a concern for...

I have been told that the yeast in Wild Devil is an identical strain to WLP653 Brettanomyces lambicus. EDIT: looks like the gent who mentioned that to me (on a different message board) is also a member 'round these parts; it's his thread linked above.

Thanks again for the great suggestions, Barc. I'll resurrect this thread when the results are in.

Thanks for the informative reply! I think I'll go for a Brett secondary, let it go for a decent time (a couple or three months, maybe), and possibly do a small bit of additional dry hopping before bottling the Brett beer depending how much aroma has been lost. A couple more questions: I'm...