Has anyone just poured a few whole bottles of bottle conditioned beer into fermenter instead of separate yeast. Was going to culture Bells yeast from bottles and thought why not just pour in the whole bottle instead of creating a starter from dregs.
When I have made starters from dregs I have built them up pretty substantially (up to a 500 or 1000 ml starter). So to get that same amount of yeast right from a bottle you would probably need something close to a 6 pack (if not considerably more). And if you have all of that other beer in your fermentor already, what beer are you brewing? Yours or theirs.
Either way, I'd say give it a try. It is certainly a simply way
the cell count in the bottles will be very low. the reason people make starters is to increase the yeast cell count to healthy levels for good beer. I'd assume the yeast in the bottles will be very slim, and you would be severely underpitching your fermenter.
www.mrmalty.com has a great yeast pitching rate calculator, that will tell you what size starter you need and yeast cell count for a healthy ferment. given your OG, batch size, and age of yeast