Few questions on starters, fermentation temps, and chloromine

You should produce your starter at room temperature since that will encourage yeast growth (propagation).

The recommended fermentation temperature range for this strain is 48 - 55 degrees F. Since you are making a large (two stage) starter you should pitch at these temperatures vs. 70 degrees F. You should cold crash your starter by placing in in your refrigerator and decant the liquid from the starter prior to pitching the yeast slurry.

Campden tablets can be made from potassium metabisulfate. I recommend you read this: https://www.morebeer.com/articles/removing_chloramines_from_water

Yeah, lagering in a bucket which is larger than the beer amount is not ideal. I personally would recommend that you bottle your beers once primary fermentation is complete, permit the beers to bottle condition for a few weeks at room temperature, and then lager the bottles. I personally bulk lager my lagers in a 5 gallon carboy but lagering in the bottles should 'work' in an equivalent manner.

Good luck with your lager beer!

Cheers!

 

Greg Noonan published rules of thumb for lagering duration in his book The New Lager Beer book. Below is something I posted previously:

“MLucky quoted a popular rule of thumb of "one week per 2 degrees Plato". I should state up front that this is the rule that I personally follow for lagering my beers.

Below is an extract of an article that Bill Pierce wrote for BYO magazine. As you will read the above rule of thumb is part of a ‘series’ of rules from Greg Noonan (author of the book “New Brewing Lager Beer”).

“How long to lager is a matter of some discussion. Light American lagers are typically held near freezing for 10–20 days, while some strong German doppelbocks are lagered as long as six months. For medium to high-gravity beers, Greg Noonan — brewpub owner and author of “New Brewing Lager Beer” (1996, Brewers Publications) — recommends 7–12 days per each 2 °Plato of original gravity. (One degree Plato is roughly equal to 4 specific gravity “points.”). For lower gravity lagers the time is reduced to 3–7 days. According to those guidelines, a 1.064 O.G. German bock should be lagered for 56–96 days, while a 1.040 American lager would be lagered 15–35 days.”

So, as you can read above there is some flexibility in selecting a lagering time for your beer. For example, to lager a 12P (1.048) beer you could lager on the shorter end of the duration: 3 x 6 = 18 days.”

I recently read a Beer Experiment on how long it takes to produce a lager beer which has me wondering: http://brulosophy.com/methods/lager-method/

Cheers!

 

In addition to the good advice offered above, I throw out these tidbits:

1. A lager starter should be a few degrees less than an ale starter, 66-72 is a sweet spot. I say this because where I live room temp is 80F.
2. I hope your not guessing on the step-starter sizes . . . a yeast calculator is a lot of help here.
3. Some sources recommend the 70 pitch temp to minimize lag time. This may result in more diacetyl. I prefer to pitch one or two degrees below target temp and let active fermentation raise the wort temp.
4. I still like to do a diacetyl rest. Ideally when the gravity is within a couple of points of finishing I raise the temp 8 - 10 degrees (over a couple of days). Typically this is around day 5 after I've taken a gravity reading. The idea is to keep the yeast active to break down any nasty diacetyl.
5. Don't be surprised with a long lag time, even when pitching a large amount of healthy yeast . . . 18 hours is the norm for me. Expect a very thin krausen ring (maybe an inch above the wort), all normal with bottom working yeast.
6. Do not skip the lagering phase. A keg would be ideal. If you're on the fence on kegging, now is the time to take the plunge. If no keg or 5 gal carboy, then bottling is probably your next best option. I would let them carbonate fully before dropping the temp for lagering. It's always better to lager too long than the opposite.

Unrelated, but suggest you give your ferm fridge a good test run before it sees any precious wort. Good luck and it would be nice if you did a follow up post in about 2 months.

 

I recently got the equipment to control my temps, and put water in my fermenter for a test run. I highly recommend doing this prior to actually using fermenting beer to experiment with. God forbid your fridge takes a crap 5 days in, or you don't quite understand how to set up your controller.

 

As long as you have yeast and suspected diacetyl precursor (α-acetolactate), it's not too late for a diacetyl rest. The rest would also accelerate the last bit of attenuation if there's some left to be had.

 

If you don't have Campden tablets, or prefer not to use them, you can always use ascorbic acid (vitamin C) instead to remove chlorine or chloramine. It can be purchased in powder form and it is fairly cheap (on a per-batch basis, it is virtually costless). More information here (search for "ascorbic").