So Far So Good, Bubbling After 3 Hours

Sorry, sure some of you are tired of reading my posts already.

Poured my stout onto the yeast cake from my Pale Ale, three hours later and getting bubbles.

I hope it continues and it works out. I sanitized the lid, airlock etc....but was unsure of what, if anything, I needed to do with the fermenter itself. I will make this down as experential learning....and roll with it.

I'm just a little confused by your post, but that is probably due to the ESB. You said you "poured" the stout onto the yeast cake from the previous Pale Ale. In which case you just used the primary that your pale ale was in? In which case you couldn't, nor would you need to sanitize the primary. Or if you took some of the pale ale yeast cake and added to another primary and added your stout wort, you would have sanitized the primary as per usual anyway. I must be missing something. Why not just pitch fresh yeast?

The rule of thumb in the old days for homebrewers was not to use yeasts from previous batches due to risk of contamination. Professionals and experienced (and super clean) homebrewers could get away with it for 2 or 3 batches, but why bother was the thinking? Now that yeasts cultures are so much more pure (and so much more expensive), I'm even thinking of getting more life out of my yeast by reusing them. Still, your flavors could drift from batch to batch as the wild yeast increase and the "tame" yeast mutate.

Re-pitching on the yeast cake is fine if you are doing it once or twice. Over time there will be a lot of dead yeast and other stuff that you don't want in there, but once is fine. I've done it several times. Works good if you are making a very strong beer and in your case, going from a lighter to a darker beer.

For re-using yeast more you'd need to look up yeast washing. There have been several threads here on that.

Yes, I poured it...right into the fermenter in which I had just used for my Pale Ale. I did not sanitize the fermenter itself, just the lid, airlock and stopper used with it.

These particular kits actually used the same yeast and I had read here that you can obtain fermentation faster that way. Seems acceptable by many in doing what I did, going from Pale Ale to stout. I really have no particular reason, just having fun and experimenting.

It started fermenting less than 3 hours after pouring the wort onto the cake...and as I type right now it is bubbling like crazy.

I have read several threads on yeast washing and I plan on giving it a try.

Yeah you wouldn't have to sanitize the fementor because it hadn't come in contact with anything to contaminate it. Probably didn't have to sanitize the lid either unless you laid it down on something.

Sounds like you did it right to me. Let us know how it turnes out.