I started the starter

I made my decision on what and how I am brewing next. Thanks for the input, hopshead and holzbrew. You'll be disappointed to learn that I didn't take either of your suggestions. I'm going to brew a split batch lager/ale, specifically a doppelbock and porter.

I'm going to use the first runnings from my mash to brew 5 gallons of the doppelbock, hopefully with an O.G. of about 1.090. Then I'll add some more dark/roasted/cara grains to my mash tun, and use the second and third runnings to make ten gallons of brown porter with an O.G. of about 1.050. Either that, or I'll just steep the extra specialty grains to get the additional color and body. I'll probably need to add some malt extract to the kettle for the porter to get the gravity up. Back of the envelope calculations says I'll need 450 +500/ 27= about 35 lbs of grain to do so otherwise, and my mash tun maxes out at maybe 30 lbs max, so yes, I'll be adding some extract.

Since I'll be using the yeast cake from my dunkel for the doppelbock, I'm covered for that portion of the brew. I did start the ale starter tonight using some older yeast that I saved from a previous batch of American Brown ale. I hope it takes off, the yeast actually froze in storage, I hope enough survived the freeze and thaw to wake up and multiply. If not, I'll be buying yeast come brewday.

I went with the porter because it's a pretty broad category, and while you should really use english malts for it, I figure the darker specialty grains will predominate the flavor, and nobody will notice that I used the second runnings of a mostly munich and vienna malt grist. Plus I'll get to use my homegrown Northern Brewer hops.