Harvesting Yeast

I've already shared some of my initial experience with my new Blichman conical fermenter. One of the benefits of the conical is being able to "easily" harvest yeast. Well, I followed instructions for extracting trub and yeast from the bottom valve and I added about a quart of chilled H2O that I had boiled ... shook it up in a large sanitized glass container ... and let it sit in the refrigerator for a few days. On inspection, I see no stratification which gives me any confidence that yeast has separated from the trub. Looks to me that I either have 100% trub ... or 100% yeast. I suppose I'm going to have to make a yeast starter and do a test batch to find out. Does anyone have any other ideas?

Did you drop the bottom of the cone first? And the take your yeast?  If so, then you probably have all yeast. If not, then you may not have enough water.

Whenever I don't get stratification, it's because I didn't use enough water. You want about 3-4x water to slurry in eachjar. I usua use 3 mason jars and fill each with slurry no more than 1/3rd full. Then fill with sterile water.  Shake, let it settle 10 minute. Then pour 90% into another jar, ddiscard the remainder.  Let it settle overnight, decant,

I don't keep slurry for more than two weeks.  I still wake it up on brewday with 500ml wort. 

Try only letting it rest for 10-15 min before you inspect it. Some times if your wait to long it will all settle into one compact pile and you wont be able to see the separation between the trub and the yeast. Simply try shaking it up again and check it sooner.