How long would you give a lager yeast to kick off?

[Dave70]

How's the lager going Dave? Krausen plus by now?

Pretty much. Ker-plunking through the airlock at around one kerplunk every 15-20 seconds at 12 deg.
Here's what I did, your results may vary.

Friday evening, make liter a weak-ish DME starter, about 1.005, then added around 2 L of wort to get it to around 1.030. Aerate buggery out of it with aquarium stone, same for the wort.

Starter was ticking over nicely by lunchtime Saturday - in the kitchen at around 20 deg - so I stuck it in with the fermenter to balance out the temps and pitched the lot that arvo.

By Sunday arvo we had liftoff.
Was it the extra yeast? the air stone? or did it just need more time? Whatever it was it seems to be working OK now and doing sulfur burps.

A bit pissed off at myself over this. With the information on hand here and elsewhere, five minutes reading could have saved needless hassle.
Worse still, I've extended the turnaround to drinkies by at least a week..

 

[Mr. No-Tip]

While we're talking lager lag, I might tack on a rider question:

I made a 3l and a 2l starter of WLP833 on Sunday night, pitched at 20 degrees with the intention of getting big growth, then chilling to decant. They were well and truly going by Monday morning. I turned off the stir bar at about 48 hours, but kept at 20. This morning they were still pretty heavily krausened.

I had planned to chill tonight ahead of brewing on Friday to give the yeast 48 hours to drop out. I am half expecting to still find krausen when I got home. I didn't think that a lager starter at 20 would be any slower than an ale one - was I wrong?