Timing is everything...

Very interesting to hear about the quick and violent fermentation you saw with this latest batch. I happen to think this is really important; I've always viewed the time between pitching and actual fermentation to be the time when baddies are most likely to get in an establish an off tasting foothold in your beer. That's of course the motivation behind the wort chiller - or any other process - that chills your wort to pitching temperature so it doesn't leisurely make it's way from 100° to 90° to 80° etc. giving opportunities for others to set up shop.

So it seems a very good sign that the beer got going so quickly.

When I was starting out in the mid 1980's (holy crap!), I frequented a homebrewing shop in Hudson, NH run by an ancient and very crabby couple. They ran it out of their garage and we (I had several friends who also brewed) generally dealt with the wife because the husband, who was some kind of chemist, was still working though he must have been a 100 years.. Eventually was sort of won her favor and when we did meet the husband he opened up a bit to us. One "secret" he swore by was the use of citric acid - typically in the form of orange juice - to be used as a "starter" for the yeast.

In short he proposed - and I did this for years - that the first thing you do when you start brewing was to setup a large sterile glass with about a cup and a half mixture of water and orange juice (maybe 4:1 water to OJ) and immediately pitch the yeast in their and cover it with saran wrap.

By the time I was done brewing and ready to pitch, this starter would already be fermenting actively. Pitching this active yeast into properly chilled wort got the fermentation process off to a quick start and contributed to me making reliably good beer without the "off" flavors of my earlier efforts.