Aerate Yeast or Wort?

Last Friday when I brewed a pumpkin ale, I pulled my 2 liter starter from the fridge early in the day to allow it to slowly come up to temp. Once at temp, I decanted the spent wort except for ~1/4 inch above the cake. Then for probably two or three hours, I let the slurry spin on the stirplate.

My intention was to aerate the yeast. I will see how the beer turns out soon, but was wondering if I was achieving anything.

I remember reading once on a different website where a brewer was discussing the superiority of aerating the yeast vs. the wort. This was early in my homebrewing career so I didn't pay much mind. Can anyone offer any real insight on this?

nice idea however the point of aerating the wort is to disolve about 10-12PPM O2 through out the wort so that the yeast will have a lot of O2 which enables them to multiply before going to work for us to create alcohol.

So spinning your yreat you are getting about 8ppm (max amount without using O2) in a very small amount of liquid so the total amount of O2 you are putting into the wort is not that much hence you are better off areating the wort. It could be argued that you are waking the yeast up howeever yeast require three things to wake up and multiply O2, sugar and nutrients. Since it is spent wort you are using you are only giving them one out of three.

Clem