making a starter - did i do it right?

[ScottyB-Brewing]

I keep it simple and follow White Labs suggestion of 2 pints (1 quart) of water and 1/2 cup of DME boil it for 10 minutes, cool it down and pitch the yeast.

The Belgian Dubbel I did last week took off like a bomb, krausen all the way to the top of the carboy and the carboy wasn't quite half full.

[Whitebeard_Brewer]

looks like half of my starter + another pack was plenty of yeast, the carboy is going nuts, had a little bubbling on the surface at 15 hours, and by 15 1/2 hours the entire carboy was full of head and the blowoff is gurgling like crazy

That "head" is the Krausen! Like your yeast starter should have had, but if you were spinning it to fast, you may not have.

[AbacusBrewingCo]

looks like half of my starter + another pack was plenty of yeast, the carboy is going nuts, had a little bubbling on the surface at 15 hours, and by 15 1/2 hours the entire carboy was full of head and the blowoff is gurgling like crazy

That "head" is the Krausen! Like your yeast starter should have had, but if you were spinning it to fast, you may not have.

thanks, just a terminology lapse for me, i always just call it the head ... i probably was spinning too fast, at one point i picked it up and did a swirl like if i didnt have a stir plate, and it went nuts for a minute. i pitched the second half into the russian imperial that's stuck, i'm going to check gravity soon and hopefully it will have dropped a few more points. the irish stout filled the carboy with krausen less than 20 minutes after it started forming, and the blowoff reservoir has been bubbling like crazy all day

[spiderwrangler]

i pitched the second half into the russian imperial that's stuck, i'm going to check gravity soon and hopefully it will have dropped a few more points.

Give it a few days.

[AbacusBrewingCo]

just checked on it, and it did drop a bit! down to 1.029 from being stuck at 1.033. i'm going to check again over the weekend and see where it's at. i'm hoping that it doesnt level off until close to 1.020. the recipe has it finishing out at 1.022 but with a lower OG than i had, so even if i only get down a few more points i'll be happy. can't wait to rack this to secondary and add the bourbon/vanilla/oak chips

[spiderwrangler]

If it's dropping and you still see activity, just leave it alone for a week or two. Last thing you want to do now after all this is inadvertently contaminate it with all the opening to check gravity.