For the first time ever, I dumped a starter.
I've bottle harvested yeast from Bell's beers many many times and always with great success. So the other day, I tried to harvest from a bottle of Special Double Cream Stout. It's dark unlike Oberon or the Amber or something, so it's harder to see the yeast, but I figured I knew what I was doing. But the starter lever looked right and last night I decided it was dead. It wasn't cloudy, didn't smell like beer, no CO2 burn when smelling it and, when I dumped it, I took a taste and it was nice and sweet. It's dead, Jim.
So I bit the bullet and actually paid for fresh yeast at the store. (Usually I build up from a slant or bottle harvest - no time for either now if I wanna brew this weekend.) Made up a new starter, pitched it about 7:00 last night, and 10 hours later, the starter is absolutely rocking.