Beer not fermenting?

[Outsider's Almanac]

So we made like our fourth batch of all grain beer last week (the 30th) and our first attempt at a lager, marzen. Everything went incredibly well presumably except that now, a week later, it appears that the beer has not fermented. This is not confirmed, but there is no kreuzen and no evidence as we have seen in the past of an active fermentation. I'm going to check the gravity tomorrow to see if there has been any change, but, in my heart of hearts, I really think we've got a dud on our hands.

So I've got a couple questions:

1) What happened? The only thing I can think of is that maybe the yeast was bad. Unfortunately, we didn't use a starter we just pitched right out of the vial so I don't have any confirmation that the yeast was good other than we were about 3 weeks on the good side of the use before date. FYI it was WLP 838 we used.

2) If in fact I check the gravity tomorrow and it hasn't fermented at all am I still ok to make a starter tomorrow and pitch on Saturday or is this ill advise?

Kind of bummed about this and also pretty curious. Any insights are appreciated.

[Ray Grace]

KInd of strange. Definitely check your gravity to confirm. What temperature was your wort when you pitched? Did you pitch too warm? If you see little or no change, I see no problem with pitching again, I might be slightly be concerned with contamination at this point with no co2 cap or alcohol creation, you should be able to tell that when you taste it.

[Outsider's Almanac]

I got a reply to this same question on the beeradvocate forum and a fellow over there mentioned that Lagers will always require a yeast starter as they require a LOT more yeast than your typical ale. to help me figure out how much we would need he posted this great link for a yeast pitching calculator:

http://www.mrmalty.com/calc/calc.html

It looks like, according to this, I'd need almost 4 slappacks or vials or two good sized yeast starters for a total of about 3/4 gallon of yeast starter.

pretty crazy, i wish i would have known about this prior cuz i think this batch is/might have been quite good. however, it's been in a carboy with a co2 cap for the past 9 days so hopefully it hasn't been spoiled. i'm going to pitch 3 more vials later today or tomorrow and i'll give an update as soon/if something happens.

[Paul Bailey]

Not ill-advised at all, but get that starter made up and pitched asap. Delaying will leave your beer open to infection. Always make up a starter in advance, especially if you are using one of those vials - there just aren't enough viable yeast cells in one of those things to get a brew going on its own!

[ryan tockstein]

+1 on the starter.... another suggestion, I always have a few varieties of dry yeast packets on hand... that way if I don't have time to make a starter I can just toss the dry stuff in. There are MANY MANY more viable cells in the dry packet than the vial, there just aren't as many different strains in the dry packets. You can usually get a pretty darn good fermentation going with 2 dry packets. And there definitely are a few strains of dry lager yeast out there