The starter is going in a Winter Warmer type beer for next winter.
Plan on splitting it into 2 secondaries, one aged on heavy toast American Oak cubes soaked in bourbon of some sort, and the other half on heavy toast French Oak cubes soaked in a Cuban Rum
So the Dark DME likely won't matter in the end to it, was just thinking down the road for other beers that might not be so dark.
So, do you have to cold crash and decant off the beer from the starter? Or just pitch as is?
I have 2 packs of the yeast, as my intentions were just to use the 2 smack packs in the beer, was also my intention to do it last Nov. (when the yeast was fresh) to have the beer for this past winter....just things didn't work out. Beersmith says if I use one pack, due to the age, I would need 4.7l of starter fluid for it to work, if I use both packs in the starter, then I can cut it down to 3l of fluid.
No flask, but a 1 gallon carboy, so might be a little big to shove in the "house" fridge (and I also don't want to piss off SWMBO), and definitely won't fit in my beer fridge. Ordered a stir bar, from OBK, should have just gotten the Light DME from them as well as when I was at NG, they only had dark, and when I asked about the light, they said they only had the dark (in sort of a take it or leave it attitude), should have left it there, but thought the stir bar would have been in this week.
Stir plate is going to be DIY. I did a year of Electronic Engineering at Moncton NBCC and our final project was an AC to DC variable converter, YT video I saw a guy just used a PC fan and glued a couple of magnets to the fan center, and used it as the stir plate engine. I have the magnets, converter and lots of PC fans, so figured I would just make one.