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You might consider freezing an early generation in several small containers. Search for "yeast bank" and "glycerol freeze" for more details, but essentially you just need to add 10% glycerol or glycerin to the slurry and freeze it. Colder is better.

Fermax is fine. I actually haven't found a product that has the sterols that are needed for healthy anaerobic cell growth. If you are pitching at least 0.75 billion per liter degree plato, and aerating well at inoculation, it's not really an issue, and effects the subsequent beer more than...

It looks like that one contains diammonium phosphate, magnesium sulfate, yeast hulls, B vitamins and calcium salts. The diammonium phosphate would be important if it is a nitrogen deficiency, and the yeast hulls will help if it is a sterol limit, but not much. My book is "Brewing...

It sounds like nitrogen limited growth. Did you use yeast nutrient in the starter?

I would be hesitant to add oxygen with the high amount of alcohol that is present. You risk alcohol dehydrogenase which will add a "wet cardboard" taste to the beer. Oxygen is needed at the onset of fermentation so that yeast can synthesize sterols. Most yeast nutrient contains ergosterol so...

The growth rate of brewing yeast (s. cerevisiae for ales and s. uvarum for lagers) is temperature dependent, and monotonic in the region commonly used for brewing. The table below is constructed from data using this paper: Walsh, R. M., and P. A. Martin. "Growth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae and...

Thanks! I'm glad you liked the book!

The easiest way to mess up a beer is to mess with it. However, part of the fun of homebrewing is experimenting. If you want to try the cinnamon and citrus flavors in beer, you might try adding them to a small sample to see if you like it, and at what ratio. You could buy a nips from the liquor...

I agree. With the large biomass it should finish pretty quickly. Try this calculator to estimate how much time it will take: http://www.woodlandbrew.com/2015/02/starter-calculator.html

Agreed, also rate of CO2 production is directly proportional to biomass. After two days the first step may not have been done without a stir plate.

LME is notorious for poor fermentability. Ray Daniels in Designing Great Beers Goes into details. If I remember correct it ranges from 40% to 75% fermentable. The water in the LME allows for maillard reactions to continue while in storage which reduces the fermentability. .. so the yeast...

It will be effective, but not as effective as in the primary because there is less yeast in the secondary. From your description of the problem I'm pretty confident that this will work for this purpose, but I can't say this will work every time. Generally speaking adding yeast nutrient will...

Substrate limitation is when a microorganism runs out of one of it's vital nutrient. Malt extract has plenty of carbohydrates for the yeast, but a limited amount of FAN (free amino nitrogen which is nitrogen that yeast can use). It sounds like your starter was fine assuming that it was two days...

There should be enough yeast to finish fermentation, but it will be slower than it would have been in primary. Assuming that your fermentation temperature is reasonable, the low attenuation sounds like substrate limitation. My guess would be nitrogen, but it could also be sterol. You might...

What Tinseth has come up with mostly agrees with Malowicki's Thesis on the subject if you drop what Tinseth calls "The bigness" factor. Here is my summary I put together for the HBT main page: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/bittering-hops-in-15-minutes.html If you can find this paper...

Mostly yes. There is anecdotal evidence that the character is different, but in terms of isomerismised alpha acids the difference is negligible.

That sounds like a beer I would like, but everyone's taste is different. If this is one of your first beers i would recommend riding it out until it mellows to something you would like. If you are familiar with how flavors evolve over time you might try bending it with some additions before...

You will want to remove the grains before the boil. Once the temperature gets to about 160°F there can be significant tannin extraction, especially if your pH is high.

If the malt extract is still in the original package it is practically sterile because of the way it is manufactured. Some of my best beers were made by adding it directly to the fermentor. It will be difficult to dissolve in the cold water, but over the course of a couple days the yeast will...

It can take longer than two weeks to carbonate. It depends on how much priming sugar you used, how much viable yeast was in suspension, and the temperature. RO water is great for extract brewing. The extract already has sufficient mineral content from the maltster that made the extract...