Slow Start (12+ hours) from a Yeast Cake?

[JJWP]

I've got a yeast cake question. Yesterday I brewed my first ever barleywine and pitched onto a yeast cake for the first time as well. From everything I have read on HBT and other sites it seems that I should have seen an active ferment within a few hours - but I didn't see anything until this morning (12-14 hours later), and while there was some small amount of krausen bubbling through the airlock/blowoff tube (I'm using an ale pail, so my blowoff is a 5/8 or so tube fitted onto the post of an airlock) it wasn't anything ridiculously active. at least i don't think so?

The yeast i pitched onto was WLP001 from a pale ale bottled the same day (OG ~1.050, FG 1.011). I noticed when racking the pale ale into the bottling bucket that there actually wasn't much of a cake to speak of. It was probably only a half inch thick and not too compact. Is this typical for wlp001? I typically primary in a carboy with a smaller bottom diameter, maybe this is why it appeared thin to my eyes?

My process was simply this: I racked the pale ale off the cake and left a half inch or so of beer on top and resealed the fermenter with the same lid (i was careful to keep the lid from touching anything except for sterile aluminum foil while I racked for bottling). After racking a popped the lid back on and set aside while brewing the barleywine.. After chilling the barleywine wort I siphoned my 5 gallons from the kettle into the waiting fermenter and sealed it up. That is pretty much how it goes right?

One thing I know i didn't do well was oxygenate the wort. I used a wine stirrer paddle thing to mix in the fermenter (kicking the yeast up as well) but the drill died and i ended up just splashing it around by hand for a few minutes.

So - should I be concerned that the ferment didn't "take off like a rocket" like everyone seems to report?


I've got some other issues/questions regarding the barleywine brewing, but I'll post elsewhere on that -

thanks for any help/advice/thoughts

 

[Pappers_]

If its fermenting now, don't worry about it. Because yeast are living beasties, there are so many factors that could come into play, its hard to say why one fermentation takes off in 3 hours, another in 12, and another in 24.

The other thing is that your fermentation probably did take off right away, but you didn't have visible signs of it.

Again, no worries, imho.

 

[JJWP]

Fair enough - I was just concerned because everything I'd read made it sound like pitching onto a cake was some sort of hold on to your hat wild ride of fermentation... but yeah, if its going now i suppose i shouldnt worry too much