Failure to launch

I'm brewing my first lager, a maibock.  With an o.g. of 1.070 I thought a yeast starter would be a good idea.  My LHBS only had an American Lager yeast, Wyeast 2035 instead of a German Lager yeast so I used that.  The date on it was Jan. 2016. After being on the stir plate overnight at @ 62 degrees there was no activity.  I tried warming it to @ 70 degrees (as suggested on the pkg.) while I got my brew day underway.  After getting my wort aerated and cooled to 65 degrees I went ahead and pitched the starter (again as suggested on the pkg.).  That was thurs. evening, it is now sunday morning and still no activity.
I'm thinking about re-pitching some fresh yeast.  I managed to find some find some Saflager 34/70 that a friend had.  It seems like the advice on fermentation temps for Lagers is all over the map.  I've seen all kinds of advice and even talked to the head brewer at my local microbrewery.  He told me not to let the temp get above 58 degrees after fermentation slowed.  But I also see advice saying to let it rise into the 60's for a few days before dropping it to lower temps for the duration.

Any advice from the group?  BTW I'm using the fermentation chamber I built.  There is a thread about it in the non-brewing discussion on this board (wiring an STC 1000) and it is working great.

Thanks, Paul

Greetings pjlenn,

I'm sorry to say, you didn't pitch nearly enough yeast. I just entered your data into mr. malty and it is telling me you would have needed 17 packs of yeast and a 4.13 liter starter using yeast from back in January of this year.  Yeast degrades rapidly and I never use yeast older than 3 months.

Moving forward, mr. malty recommends 3 packs of dry yeast for a 1.070 wort.

What I normally do when brewing a Lager is to allow fermentation to begin at whatever temperature my brewing area is when I pitch the yeast.  Once it starts, I move the fermenter to my cooler.  As far as the temperature you ferment at, I recommend following the yeast manufacturers printed recommendations. These recommendations are also listed in BS2

Hope this helps!
Good Luck!

Thanks for the reply.  Sounds like I need to add a few more packets of dry yeast according to your calculations.  I aerated the hell out of it today to make sure that I had plenty of oxygen in the wort.  Would hope that I would start to see even a minimum of activity.

Paul

Well I got about 36 hrs. of very slow fermentation, which dropped the gravity from 1.070 to 1.065 and then stopped.  I waited 24 hrs. and then re-pitched with 3 pkg.'s of saflager 34/70.  I followed the directions on the Fermentis website for hydrating the yeast.  It's now been @ 12 hrs.  at 68 degrees and still no sign of any activity. I'm dropping the temp of the fermentor to 62 degrees and will hold it there for a day or so and then slowly ramp it down to 54 degrees which is where Fermentis says to start the fermentation.

http://www.fermentis.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Saflager-W-3470-en.pdf

Paul

48 hours after re-pitching with the dry yeast the gravity had dropped to 1.025 so apparently the original yeast was a little on the lazy side.  I'm now ramping the temperature down by 2 deg. C every 24 hours.  This will give me an opportunity to see what the lower limit of my new fermentation chamber will be..

Paul