Hi Katey, you didn't mention the ratio of ingredients you're feeding your starter or its rising behavior, but usually a heavy alcohol aroma is more likely to occur when the starter has gone beyond ripe and has fallen significantly. If you have a scale, you might want to try feeding your starter with a reduced percentage of starter as compared to water and flour. This may allow you to line up your twice daily feedings closer to when your starter is at its peak rise, which should help to improve its aroma and rising behavior. I would recommend trying something like 1:3:3 or even 1:4:4 (starter:water:flour, by weight). For our starter routine, a 1:4:4 feeding would look like this: 28g starter + 113g water + 113g flour. I would also encourage you to feed your starter with our Unbleached All-Purpose Flour rather than our Bread Flour. While Bread flour certainly won't harm your starter, there's a little more starch in AP flour, so your starter will be getting a slightly better meal. Good luck and let us know if this improves the situation!
January 13, 2024 at 10:42am
In reply to My starter is 10 days old… by Katey (not verified)
Hi Katey, you didn't mention the ratio of ingredients you're feeding your starter or its rising behavior, but usually a heavy alcohol aroma is more likely to occur when the starter has gone beyond ripe and has fallen significantly. If you have a scale, you might want to try feeding your starter with a reduced percentage of starter as compared to water and flour. This may allow you to line up your twice daily feedings closer to when your starter is at its peak rise, which should help to improve its aroma and rising behavior. I would recommend trying something like 1:3:3 or even 1:4:4 (starter:water:flour, by weight). For our starter routine, a 1:4:4 feeding would look like this: 28g starter + 113g water + 113g flour. I would also encourage you to feed your starter with our Unbleached All-Purpose Flour rather than our Bread Flour. While Bread flour certainly won't harm your starter, there's a little more starch in AP flour, so your starter will be getting a slightly better meal. Good luck and let us know if this improves the situation!