Spelt Sourdough starter not rising for over a month

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Hi all!

I've been babying a spelt starter for over a month now and it has never risen or gotten to that nice big, bubbly, happy starter consistency. Help!

I started it with the Deb Wink pineapple juice method (though used orange juice) and have been using purified water and spelt flour since. Currently I'm feeding once a day, slightly more flour than water (roughly saving 1/4 cup, adding 1/4 cup flour, 1/4 water). 

I've played with different ratios, feeding once a day, twice a day, adding apple cider vinegar, moving to different temperatures and nothing seems to help. It has bubbles and smells nice and yeasty, but that's it. No big bubbles you can see through the side of the jar and no rising. Is there something tricky about spelt? (I decided to use it for dietary reasons, but could be persuaded to ditch it). 

Any tips would be greatly appreciated! Thanks in advance!

You might actually be starving it. Most recipes for starters call for percentages of the ingredients in grams, not cups. A quarter cup of water is about 60 grams, and a quarter cup of flour is about 30-ish (maybe more for whole spelt, but not much). So, by that method you are actually using 'more' water than flour by a long shot!

Try using 50 grams of starter, 100 grams of water and 100 grams of flour for a feeding instead. Give it a good stir after four hours or so and see what it does.

Lazy Loafer has a great tip in the post above, but I'm not clear about what "a good stir after four hours" does? "Lazy", or anyone else...can you clarify please?
GregS

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Your starter is perhaps too wet to rise.  Try using half as much water for normal feedings to come closer to 100% hydration.  What temperature is the starter?  If it is cool at room temp... you might not want to change anything, just use a recipe for a wet starter.  I would try a few things first before changing a routine.  Try a few experiments while maintaining this starter just the way you have in the last few days.  

Experiment 1)   Make a firmer starter using some discard.  Now let's feed it...  Skip the water with the first feeding.  Try feeding more flour  or... reduce the starter amount to 1/8 cup (the water to 1/8 cup and) up the flour to a little more than 1/4 c.  To eyeball it, take a heaping Tbs of mature starter (double the volume with water) and add enough flour to make a very soft dough.  let it sit covered and rise until it bursts.  Repeat (adding water) to feed and maintain.

Right now  with a fourth cup of everything, it looks like the feeding ratio per weight is  roughly   (2, 2,1)  (s,w,f)  This ratio is normally for a cool climates and cold pantries a large wet starter.  It does not expand much if at all and tends to sit and slowly ferment, bubbles are tiny and tend to drift to the top.  A large portion of this type of starter is used to make bread dough (see Experiment #1) so it is not uncommon to keep a gallon jar about half full of starter at any given time.   

If your room temp is above 73°F then it is possible the starter is underfed.  Then the feeding ratio (flour) should be higher.  That would boost yeast activity.  So far, I think the starter is just too runny to rise.  we shall see...

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I started my spelt started with a tablespoon of my wheat one. 2 refreshes later (I baked bread with it!) and the wheat was down to homoeopathic levels. It's quite lively and more sour than the wheat one - I feed it white spelt flour when I use it (3 times a week to make 4 loaves each time - usually) in-between using it, it lives in the fridge. It doesn't rise that much compared to the wheat one, but it raises the loaves without any issues.

-Gordon

No wonder it's not rising as much. And it's spelt to-boot. Won't be able to handle as much water as normal wheat.

Change your feeding to equal parts by WEIGHT! and watch it rise.

E.g. 60g starter + 60g water + 60g spelt flour.

At the beginning it'll still be quite high hydration as your starter is already overly hydrated. But eventually it'll balance out.

FYI equal parts of flour and water by weight is 100% hydration.

 

1 cup of spelt flour = 115g

1 cup water = 236g

 

So 1/4 cup of each is...

28.75g spelt

59g water

= 205% hydration!

No wonder it's not rising.

 

P.s. I've just seen lazy loafers post above. So I could have just said "ditto"

I knew I was being lazy using cups instead of buying a scale, but wow! I was definitely over hydrating! I fed it properly this morning and it rose beautifully and and looks SO much better. Thank you all! I wish I found this weeks ago :)

Hm, now that it is finally (!) doing its sourdough thing, how much longer do you think I need to keep up with daily feedings before it's ready for baking and storing in the fridge? 

Thanks again, everyone!

Kirsten