Hi Ian, if your starter smells strongly of alcohol and has dark hooch, it's probably best to discard it. I doubt it would hurt anyone, but the flavor isn't going to contribute anything positive to your baked goods. We generally recommend only saving the discard for a week or two in your refrigerator, but I feed my starters fairly often and have found that if I keep a vat of starter discard in my refrigerator for a few weeks, and add discard to it each time I feed my starter, this seems to keep the discard fairly fresh. After 2-3 weeks I'll either make a big batch of sourdough crumpets and freeze them, or dump out the remaining discard and start fresh. 

Barb

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