Slow yeast starter possible infection risk?

Not familiar with this particular strain but I've made starters (WLP400 comes to mind) that looked just as dead but worked out just fine.

Two things to try;
1) Look across the top of the liquid from a low angle. See if there are CO2 bubbles breaking the surface.
2) Put a few drops on a refractrometer to see if the gravity has changed.

 

I wouldnt put that shit near my wort, let alone in it. Looks like a bad bottle of fantome...

 

You are asking a lot out of these few old yeasties. The recommendation of Yeast is to use a reduced OG starter when dealing with older/weaker or bottle-harvested yeast . . . something in the 1.020 range. Personally I would try to revive small quantities with a starter well below 0.5L, the idea is to not stress out the poor little guys. Once you see activity (krausen, off-gassing) then decant and step up to a larger size and higher OG.

My experience with starting small quantities is that it's easy to miss the krausen. From your photos, the funky looking whitesh gunk may be a krausen ring . . . or it could be random FLWG. I regularly miss the activity when stepping up bottle-harvested yeast, it can come and go overnight. This isn't a bottle-harvest, but you're dealing with the same problem. After about two days I'll decant and step-up on faith. Others post they let the stir plate whirl away for a week.

My suggestion is to chill/decant and re-start with a smaller size and lower OG. If there are active yeast cells you will get activity. Oxygen and yeast nutrient helps get the show on the road. You are looking for an increase in the dense yeast slurry that settles to the bottom of the flask, but at these low levels that will be hard to determine (at least on the first step). From your description, the slurry will be mostly dead cells and any growth will be hard to measure. Usually on the second step you can actually see an increase in quantity. Also, you should get a pleasant aroma with activity . . . very distinctively difference than the aroma of starter wort. Yeast strains may produce krausen with a stir plate or they may choose not to. If there is no krausen using a stir plate, I randomly cut it off for about 45 minutes and let things settle, then a hard shake and look for off-gassing. Remember, the whole process may start and stop in less than 8 hours.

Once you get a true krausen, or off-gassing with a hard shake, then you are home free. The only other caveat is your initial slurry will still be mostly dead cells. Say you have 50ml, there could be as few as 5ml of active yeast. That's enough to get things going, but you'll have a large quantity of dead cells hanging around. This makes estimating the number of live cells tricky. There are some guidelines in estimating live cells/ml, but it really is a WAG.

 

Based on context, I'd say he meant Funky Looking Whitish Gunk. Though it could mean F-ing Lovely Wort Goo.

 

Well now that that has happened I would definitely start over! Were you starting to get some krausen with the starter? In my experience with using harvested yeast, I never see a whole lot of activity going on in there. At least not as much as when using fresh yeast. But, once pitched into the main batch they take off