At 08:58 AM 12/28/2004, Kevin wrote:
>It was going so well. I sterilized the jar and utensils, mixed in one cup
>of warm water (chlorine free) with one cup of whole wheat flour and set
>aside. After 24 hours the flour had settled, leaving dark water at the
>top, but there were some bubbles.
>
>Mixed, poured out one cup and mixed in 1/2 cup whole wheat flour and 1/2
>cup warm water. In 12 hours the mixture had doubled, with bubbles about
>1/8 of an inch across throughout, and was floating atop a layer of water.
>The starter had a sour smell. Mixed, poured out one cup, mixed in 1/2 cup
>whole wheat flour and 1/2 cup warm water, and set aside again.
>
>Then nothing. After 12 hours there were no signs of bubbles. Mixed and
>waited 12 hours more. Nothing. Waited another 24 hours. Nothing.
>
>What happened?

Probably oversoured/undernourished - for sure after the last 24 hours. I am
not sure if you mean by "mixed" after 12 hours that you fed it again. It's
not clear how you fed it after the second step -

1 - 24 hours: reduce and double
2 - 12 hours: activity, reduce and double again
3 - 12 hours: no more activity - not clear if you fed again
4 - 24 hours: no more activity - not clear if you fed again

What's somewhat strange is the separation/floating you describe after step 2.

If you have sour smell and nothing or little putrid/disgusting/strange
smell, you are in business and need to keep nursing. In your case, that
would have been after 36 hours.

Somewhat correlating with:

http://samartha.net/SD/MakeStarter01-5.html

The tricky part is to recognize oversouring and take countermeasures i. e.
stronger dilution. If it's happening and you don't keep going, it gets quiet.

It could be that the LB's are not doing much gassing, but are active and
kill everything else off and then shut down themselves.

It's often not clear if it's undernourishment or oversouring and the way
out of it is to go both ways - split it, use one part with strong dilution
- 1 : 10, the other part go on as before.

Also, stirring helps moving the nutrients around, get some air in (the
critters like it) and get a control on gas production.

It could well be that your quiet mixture comes up again, when you do a
strong dilution and continue feeding.

Growth rates are geometric in the area of doubling maybe every 1 1/2 - 2
1/2 hours, so going at full blast, you can have like a 64-fold increase in
12 hours and a 4096-fold increase in 24 hours if no hindering factors
(souring, nutrient depletion) come into play which happen

Maybe it gives you some ideas what could be going on.

In any way - congratulations to trying this. Can be a rewarding experience.

As for the other responses:

Kenneth: flour sterilized? - Hardly because it was active and smelled sour.
Mac: suspected virus - Nice idea. Souring by LB's is pretty
established in our biosphere. Maybe DA can tell you more about this. He
claimed to be unable to keep a starter going for a longer time and need to
get regular updates - all to be taken with grains of salt from that corner.

Samartha


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