Yeast cake starter

Prior to last evening I had taken the yeast cake (WPL060) from a previous batch of beer and stored it in the fridge for about 2 weeks. Last night I whipped up a starter using DME and retrieved the yeast cake from the fridge.
Using a sterilized turkey baster I siphoned off the top layer and a tiny bit of the trub and placed it into my starter. This is my first time making a starter from "harvested" yeast. The others have all promptly started fermenting overnight. This morning I check the container... NADA. There were a few and I mean FEW bubbles on the surface probably left over from shaking it before going to bed.

Any suggestions on where I might have screwed up? Thanks!

Unless you brew a ton of the same style why don't you just put your wort on your entire yeast cake? Then you don't need a yeast starter because you have a crap load of yeast anyways.

You can reuse the cake itself, but I would strongly recommend dumping at least half of it. An entire yeast cake is overpitching by a ridiculous margin. A healthy fermentation needs to include some sort of growth phase, which you would miss with that much yeast.

kevmoron said:

You can reuse the cake itself, but I would strongly recommend dumping at least half of it. An entire yeast cake is overpitching by a ridiculous margin. A healthy fermentation needs to include some sort of growth phase, which you would miss with that much yeast.

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Is that true though if you're doing a lager?

petep1980 said:

Unless you brew a ton of the same style why don't you just put your wort on your entire yeast cake? Then you don't need a yeast starter because you have a crap load of yeast anyways.

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I wasn't sure what kind of issues I would have with few week old massive trub nugget in the bottom of the container. Plus I figured siphoning off the top liquid would get the yeast plus a little trub would pick up the bottom layer o' yeasties. I just wasn't sure if there was something I fundamentally did wrong.

Keep stirring as often as you can and give it a few days.

I would guess you didn't get enough actual yeast when you pulled the liquid off the top. It should start if you give it enough time though.

Check out this thread: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/yeast-washing-illustrated-41768/.