Expand on that one please...I haven't done a lot of digging, but it always sounded a lot more finicky than that.
Is there a minimum extract to water ratio to make a starter?
In this instance, I would have needed a 2.5 gallon starter. Boil 2.5 gal of water with some amount of extract, cool, then add smack pack?
How long would it take to get the appropriate cell count after that?
What then?
<noobishness off>
God I love this place!!!
Yeah, you've pretty much got it. I have a three gallon carboy, so big starters work in there but I usually do smaller starters and use a growler.
I use 1/2 cup DME to 2 cups water. Start the water boiling in a small saucepan, and then add the DME. Boil for a couple of minutes, then stick that saucepan in the sink in cold water. While it's cooling, sanitize the growler and a funner and some foil. Once it's cool, pour the yeast in the growler through the sanitized funnel, then pour the wort in (it helps rinse the yeast down into the growler). Cover with the foil, and shake. Give it a shake or a swirl each time you walk by it. Once it's fermented out, you can use it, or even pour off the spent wort and add more cooled starter wort.
For lagers, I like to the the finished starter and put it in the fridge a couple of days. Then, I pour off the clear spent wort and just swirl up the remainder of liquid/yeast and use that for my lager. For lagers, I like to take my yeast out of the fridge during the boil so that my yeast is about 48 degrees and the wort is about 50 degrees when I pitch. That makes a great lager! No esters, and a crisp, clean flavor in the lager.
Some people like to pitch their lagers in the 60's and wait for signs of fermentation before dropping the temperature. That's not necessary if you use a big enough starter, plus I don't like the flavor profile as much. Just like I don't pitch my ales at 85 and wait for them to come down to room temperature, I don't do it with the lagers. The lager would be just about finishing up fermentation by the time it got down to 48-50 degrees, and then you'd have some off-flavors. If you pitch cold, you often don't even need to do a diacetyl rest.
I hope I'm not making it sound "hard"- it's not at all! It's just more dependent on proper yeast health, and on proper fermentation temperatures. Lagers are just a little more finicky.