Chip

Recipes 

I washed my yeast from my last batch of mild, following the directions listed here very closely. Today I tried using it on a new batch of the same beer.

I let it sit on the counter and come to room temp - 70 degrees. I added it to a bit of spring bottled spring water with about a spoon of dry malt powder. After about 5 hours nothing was happening so I pitched it into the wort and now am hoping for the best.

Should I have started my starter the day before or did I just miss something? I was meticulous about sterilizing the jars and water just like the directions here said to do. There was a bit of a pop when I opened the jar.

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Primary - Orfy's Mild Ale
Secondary - Hard Cider
Bottled - my version of a simple English Mild

Beerrific

Recipes 

A spoon of dry malt is really not much of a starter to speak of.

In general, if you want to make a starter from washed yeast, you can just follow the procedure for a starter you would follow when using a fresh vial or smack pack. Here is a good basic starter procedure:
Yeast Starters - Home Brewing Wiki
Also, when you added the DME, did you boil it? In general you should boil the water and extract, cool it, aerate it thoroughly, then add it to your yeast.

Also, depending on how long the washed yeast has been in the fridge, it is possible you do not need a starter. Here is a calculator that lets you estimate how much washed yeast you need to pitch:
Mr Malty Pitching Rate Calculator

But, I have a feeling your beer will come out just fine, just give it some time and make sure it is at the proper temperature.

Coastarine

Recipes 

Everything you need to know

Brew Strong: Repitching Yeast

Long and short of it is that if you keep the yeast for more than a week then you need to make a full blown starter from some of it, but if you listen to the show you'll get a lot more from it than that.

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Fermenting:.
Conditioning:[Oaked Cider][ESB]
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Chip

Recipes 

Thanks for the advice. I did not boil the DME, rather just threw it in with the yeast and a bit of spring water at room temp.

Still nothing a full day later so I will wait one more day and if nothing happens I will just use a package of Nottingham and see what happens and wait to play with the washed yeast by itself so I can perfect the process.

__________________
Primary - Orfy's Mild Ale
Secondary - Hard Cider
Bottled - my version of a simple English Mild