Experiment in Yeast Washing, October 18, 2015

THIS IS NOT A HOW-TO GUIDE!
I screwed this up somehow, so I'm posting this as "here's what I did" and not "here's how to do it."  If you see in my process where I went wrong, feel free to let me know in the comments or by email.  The yeast was WLP007 from Brew #30.
Here's what I did

• Racked the beer from the primary, leaving about a half inch of beer on top of the trub on 10/18, then put the primary lid back on,
• Boiled 6 clean 1 pint mason jars, lids, and rings for about 15 minutes
• Closed all of the mason jars, full of the boiled water
• Put outside to cool down to room temperature
• Poured 4 of the jars into the primary
• Swirled primary to break up the trub
• Allowed to settle 30-45 minutes until it clearly had 3 layers of trub, yeast, watery beer
• Poured off the beer and yeast back into the 4 jars, leaving the trub
• Capped the 4 jars and allowed them to cold crash in the fridge for about an hour while I cleaned my primary. Again, I clearly had 3 layers of trub, yeast, and watery beer
• Dumped the water from the remaining 2 jars and poured the watery beer and yeast layers from the first 4 jars into these
• Capped the jars, labeled and put them in the fridge for later.
• This whole process, start to finish, was about 3 hours

On 10/29 I attempted to use the first of these jars for Brew #32.  I decanted the jar to get the water beer off the top, then added the yeast and trub from the jar to a 6 cup starter.  I was used to seeing my starters take off within about 12 hours, so when after 24 hours had passed and the visible activity was still very anemic, I went to the LHBS and got another vial of 007 and added that to the starter. Then I threw away the other jar.  I just had no confidence in the quantity of viable yeast in these jars, and I don't like the idea of pitching unhealthy yeast in one of my beers.  I haven't attempted yeast washing since, becuase A) I use a pretty wide variety of yeasts, and B) I don't think it was worth the time invested to save $7-$8.