What is the liquid on my sourdough starter?

You open the jar and there is a layer of liquid on the starter. It may be clear, gray, or almost brown. It can smell sharp, like alcohol. That liquid is hooch. The starter has eaten the flour you gave it and has kept working. The liquid is a byproduct of a hungry culture, not a sign that the jar has died.

What to do with it

Pour it off if the smell is very strong and you do not want that much tang in the next loaf. Or stir it back in if you like a sharper starter. Then feed the jar. Flour and water, the same feeding you always do. The feeding page uses equal weights of starter, flour, and water once the jar exists. A rubber band at the fill line tells you when it has doubled. Hooch means you are late. The feed is the correction.

A starter in the refrigerator makes hooch sooner than one you feed every day, because the cold slows it and does not stop it. A dark layer after a week in the fridge is still hunger. Feed it the day before you bake. Do not try to raise the country loaf with the hungry jar as it stands. Wait until it doubles.

What is not hooch

• Gray, tan, or dark liquid, and a smell that is sour: hooch. Feed it.
• Pink or orange streaks: mold. Throw the starter out, wash the jar, begin again.
• Fuzzy spots of any color: mold. The same ending.
• A rotten smell, not a tangy one: do not taste it to be sure. Compost it.

People scrape mold off a jar and keep the bottom because the starter took two weeks to grow. Do not. Mold you can see is not the only mold in the jar. A new starter is cheaper than a bad loaf, and cheaper than a sick kitchen. Hooch is a delay. Color that is not gray is a stop.