Dilemna about yeast growth in starter

Can somebody explain this to me? I get the idea of stepping up a starter but here is my dilemma - I used 800 ml of starter wort for a vial of WLP-004. (My plan was to crash it and use the following weekend.) After a day it had a little krausen and was caramel in color. I had expected more pronounced activity but took it off the stir plate, dumped it into a quart jar (with lid) and into the fridge. I ended up with a bit less than 1/2" of slurry on the bottom. I posted here at that time to see if that was about right and got an affirmative, but then I thought if I decanted off the beer and put the slurry into another 800ml of fresh wort then I should get at least half-again more slurry. This time I had very good activity and lots of krausen. I crashed it again with high hopes, but after it settled I had, you probably guessed it - a little less than 1/2" of slurry.
???

 

You need to increase your starter wort.

Yeast only multiply when there is more food than the current number of yeast need. If you put them in a starter that small they just eat the sugar and only multiply to maintain their current population.

Even at 1L you aren't going to get much growth, basically you are just waking them up, feeding them, then putting them back to bed.

I would pitch your slurry into a 1.5L starter minimum. You'll approximately double your yeast at that point.

 

I use this calculator to find my starter sizes (number of steps, volume etc)

http://www.brewersfriend.com/yeast-pitch-rate-and-starter-calculator/

 

Thanks, that helps a lot. Somehow I know I would have to buy that 2L E-flask...

 

I would bite the bullet and buy a 3 L.

You need extra head space so you can't put a 2L starter in a 2L E-flask

 

I'll try that argument with SWMBO.