You can follow the "How to" on reviving dried starter on
my blog here, complete with photos. I'm not entirely clear on what happened with your starter revival, the steps indicated, although slightly different from what I do, should still get you a decent starter.
From what I can see, your starter kick started somewhat faster than the "
up to 3-4 days" noted, which is great. Once you see the expected bubbling activity, you're good to go! Handle it like normal starter: if it's kept out on the counter (which you should for 2 or 3 days after reviving) feed it twice daily at about 12 hours, roughly: "in the morning" and "in the early evening" is accurate enough.
Why you're getting hootch: It's hungry. I'd first tackle that issue with feeding more, at a 1:2:2 ratio so it has more food to sustain it over the 12 hours. Start with a smaller amount of your active starter, say 20 grams, add 40g of water, stir, then 40g of flour, stir. You'll have the thick pancake batter consistency and a total of 100g of starter. This will then give you 80 g of starter to use each time you cut back down to 20 g on the next feed. You can quickly build that 80g up to most home-baking amounts in one or two feeds. Feeding it more and more often will resolve the hootch producing hunger issue.
Since attempt #2 is showing good activity, just take some of it now and follow the ratio feed above and see what happens. If you see your starter doubling (or better) and start receding within just a few hours, you may want to go with 8 hour feeds. You have a very healthy, active starter on your hands and it needs more food. Like a teenager. Once you've had a successful run of feeds and expansions for two or three days, then you can feed, wait a couple of hours until it has expanded a little - but not yet peaked - and pop it in the fridge where you will now slow down the eating and expanding process. You can then feed the starter weekly or even two weeks.
Other ways to unknowingly stun a starter: using water with chlo
rine or chlo
ramine; note there is a difference between these. One reason you may see instruction saying to use bottled water is that these are usually filtered and do not contain chemicals meant to kill off things like, say, yeast and bacteria, the very things you're trying to cultivate in the starter. You can normally use your local tap water if it's drinkable for people and
does not contain chlo
ramine. Check your local water supplier's website to see if this is what they use in the water's treatment.
If they use chlo
rine, it's a simple process of letting an open container of water stand out for a day or two for the chlorine to dissipate. If they use chlo
ramine however, not so much; that stuff stays in the water and won't simply dissipate. In that case, bottled spring water or filtered water (like Disani which is simply filtered tap water) is the better choice.
Since you use bottled water, however, this last is unlikely to be your issue. I'm just adding this for others who may read this thread and not be aware this could be the cause of their problems.
As for the orange juice (or pineapple or lemon, etc.): this supplement is only really useful in the Starter From Scratch process. Again, in your specific situation, you're reviving an active starter so the juice isn't needed. The reason to use it in a From Scratch process is to lower the pH level in the flour soup to where hibernating yeasties like it and wake up; the bacteria that "pretend" they're expanding your starter dislike that pH level and therefore won't fire up. It's not really needed in reviving flakes. In effect, adding the juice is ONLY done to help
the starter parent not feel like their starter has died on them because they mistake that bacteria's expansion (and quick demise) as "dead starter". It is not necessary in creating a starter mix at all. It simply skips that otherwise typical step and saves a day or three in the basic starter starting process.
At this point, then, you're ready to handle your new revived starter like a real starter. Just give it a couple more days of regular feeds to get it back to a strong healthy starter - drying and reviving will have taken some of it's 'Ooomph' out - then handle it like any good, active starter. You are now at about week 3 or more of someone else's "from scratch" process.
