Hello!
I made my first sourdough starter on January 22nd. It started out well. On Friday I made a Levain to bake bread with it, which was nice and bubbly and passed the float test. The bread turned out decent even though the dough was too sticky, but that´s another story.
Starting from Tuesday last week I kept the sourdough starter in the fridge after feeding it.
It was fine when I made bread on Friday and I had planned to feed it again tomorrow, because a week would have passed since I last fed it by then.
Yesterday I discovered that a layer of "hooch" had formed and the starter smelled like alcohol, so I got rid of most of the starter and fed it with 100g whole wheat flour and 100g water. I left it in a warm area.
Today there seemed to be a layer of hooch between two layer of starter. It smelled a lot like nail polish remover!
I discarded everything but about two tablespoons of starter and fed it with 100g whole wheat flour and 100g water again.
Will it be able to recover?
This is normal. In my experience, the hooch forms between/on top of the starter when it's really active and needs a feed. So you might want to start by feeding it every 4 days while it's in the fridge instead of waiting a full week. Remember, if you take it out of the fridge into room temp, its activity will increase - hence the hooch you found today.
Nailpolish smell means there is acetone or ammonia in it...I would keep going, but start another one on the side.
Maybe there was just some germ on one spoon, glass, flour, water or something like that...you can't avoid those things sometimes. Just make sure you use clean (not steril, clean) equipment and good flour. Once your starter is strong and going, it will be a bit more forgiving.
To take your starter out of the fridge and let it mature some more. That means feeding it well twice a day for a few weeks. By then, the beasties will have sorted themselves out and you can thicken it to store in your fridge. I make mine thick enough that I don’t have to feed it for several weeks. I also take small amount when it is time to bake and build that up until I have enough to bake with. This last step saves me throwing out flour.
I took a long hiatus from sourdough making. My last batch I made and dried was from two years ago. I tried reawakening it with mixed results. The first had very little bubbles and foaming even after a week. The second attempt had a very strong acetone smell even after feeding it for a week twice a day. I dumped both starters because I was never 100% happy with that starter I made two years ago. I think something was off in it. It was never that strong and not like other starters I’ve had in the past. I decided this time to purchase a starter online. I got it on Saturday and it’s already quadrupling itself.
update: I think it recovered! I´ve been feeding it every twelve hours. Over the course of last night it tripled (or nearly quadrupled?) in size, and it doesn´t smells like alcohol today!
Keep it up for a few more weeks and then you can store it in the fridge after thickening it up.