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This will be my second brew. The first was a great learning curve and tastes great.

This time I'll be using a liquid yeast instead of dried and I'll be making a starter.

The yeast I'll be using is Wyeast 3864 Canadian / Belgian Style. As I'll be making a stronger brew will it serve me to do one starter then pitch that yeast into another starter before pitching it into the main fermenter?

I understand for stronger brews you need more yeast? Will the two starters work fine with 200g LDME in 2l of water each time?

Go Iain!

It depends on the gravity of your brew, but that should be plently of yeast for a single batch. Just remember to be absolutely super sanitary with your starters.
http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html
If you haven't seen it already, that is a good tool for determining what you should be looking at to get the appropriate number of yeast cells per gravity per volume.

The first starter went well, formed a nice lump of yeast, not really a cake - more a pastry...

Just put the second LDME wort onto it and should have a real nice load of yeast ready for the weekend brew day!

I have to say, reading the forum and John Palmer's work you form an opinion this stuff is hard. After going to G&G and seeing their open-shop brew day and just getting stuck into it the myth disappears. I'm not saying I'm up there with the experts but I'm wishing I'd started this a long time ago!

Bring on Saturday and the brewing.... thinking of steeping some orange peel in the brew...

Brewed last night...

Making the jump from straightforward brewing into the mysterious world of Belgian beer - I wanted to clone Maudite but as I'm not yet at all-grain levels of sophistication I pulled info form a few sources and opted for the following experiment:

Using a Type 4 fresh wort kit from G&G, the label of which says: "...made with Pilsner malt and with 10% of the gravity being provided by Candi sugar. 25 IBU with bitterness provided by a mild neutral hop and a small late addition of German Hallertau."

I steeped 110g of Belgian Aromatic malts, 110g of crystal malts and 40g of chocolate malts for 25 minutes in filtered water with a touch of calcium added in 2 litres of water.

Then I boiled the wort adding 20g of Tettnang hops for 40 mins, adding a further 10g with 10 mins to go and 10g at flame out. I also tossed in 25g of sweet orange peel.

Poured the wort into the fermenter with the Type 4 and added the yeast from the LDME starter and tonight it's bubbling away like a rocket

Seeing as yesterday in 1975 Pink Floyd released Wish You Were Here, I brewed 'Wish You Were Here Beer' to the album while enjoying a fine selection of European beers I laid my hands on the day before .

Here's hoping it's as good as my first beer.