Enough time for starter?

Brewing a Harpoon IPA clone today, an all grain kit, from Austin Homebrew. Forgot to make my starter last night so it'll only be on the stir plate for maybe 4-8 hrs. Is this going to be enough time for the yeast to get up and go to work or should I be ok? Yeast is Wyeast 1098 British Ale.

Probably not enough time, but something is better than nothing. Just pitch the whole starter.

Oh I was planning on pitching the whole starter. It's been on the stir plate for five whole minutes now lol. Looks like we'll be able to leave it on the plate for about 10 hrs now so that should be better. Thanks for the reply.

Well ended up where my starter is still on the stir plate. That's the good news. Bad news is my OG came in to a 1.048 instead of 1.061 where it was supposed to be. I'm hoping its because this was our first batch with our new grain mill, but we had all kinds of problems from the onset so frankly I don't really give a sh*t about the yeast at this point. About ready to dump this batch cause I have no clue if it'll be any good coming in that far under the supposed OG.

Btw, if anybody has any words of wisdom or can give me a silver lining I'd REALLY appreciate it.

Don't dump it, geez. Ferment and see what happens. Might surprise you.

The purpose of starters isn't just to get the yeast up and moving, but primarily to grow new yeast. You won't be growing much yeast in the timeframe you're talking about, but you will definitely be waking up the yeast and subtracting whatever time that is from your lag.

I think I'm good on the starter, its been going since noon yesterday. But to be that far under a 1.061 SG? Granted I'm not going to dump it, just venting my frustration. It's just funny how I was worried about my yeast, and that's the one thing about this batch that so far has gone right. It's ironical.