ya just curious about what you guys think here.

Got a vial of San Francisco Lager proped from White labs on 03/25/2012
when i used mrmalty saturday i forgot to hit Hybrid on type of beer so my starter was roughly 1/2 of what it should have been. today i realized this mistake

the starter had about 24 hours on it and looked done when i pitched to 5.5gal @66f , over about 3 hours i dropped the temp to 59F and saw fermentation activity by the end of the night.
right now its going at 59F.

so i know i underpitched but do you think that pitching at 66F was just enough to maybe get a little more growth in enough time?

hmmm

I was just dicking around with the mrmalty calculator on this topic the other day and I found that the difference between an ale at 1.052 and a hybrid at the same OG for a 5.5 gallon batch was only 67 billion cells. (200b vs. 267)
A 1 liter starter would achive 200 while a 1.44 would get the 267 needed. (On a stir plate)
Beersmith, on the other hand, says you'd need 402 billion cells.

I'm not entirely sure which one is correct, but I always make a 1.5 liter starter on a stir plate and have had great success with my common.

I'd guess, while the high start temp may have contributed to a quick start, you had enough yeast to start that beer anyway.

i have been working with that yeast a bit lately and i think you will be fine...it is a strong fermentor but like all lager yeasts it takes its time...give it a chance to finish completely. I usually start ferment at 55F for about 5 days then ramp up a degree a day or every 2 days and cap at 65F for a total start to finish time of 2 weeks. The beer ends up very clear as this yeast is a heavy flocculator.
cheers, hope this helps

Thanks for the feedback.

Fermentation was going pretty strong on monday and tuesday and was just starting to taper off Wednesday @61F
I had to leave town on Thursday morning so i bumped the controller to 67. the sulfur smell is fading out.

The pitching rates used on mr malty based on:

ale - 0.75 million cells per ml per degree Plato
hybrid - 1.0 million cells per ml per degree Plato
lager 1.5 million cells per ml per degree Plato

That hybrid rate is suitable for pitching directly at 59-60°F, so you should be fine by starting it at 65.