I recently moved to San Francisco and have now tried a second time to make a sourdough (from instructions in Wild Fermentation).
Day 1: no activity.
Day 2 (!): lively, bubbly, frothy, clearly active, and nicely sour.
Day 3: No activity, *extremely* sour.
Day 4+: see Day 3.
I get the feeling it's so active that it ups the acid level rapidly and essentially kills itself. Is this a reasonable hypothesis? The first time, I tried to resuscitate it by using a small amount of it to seed a whole new flour-water slurry, but strangely it didn't take. This time I'm reluctant to tread the same ground.
Does anyone have any suggestions? I miss my sourdough baking and after all am living in THE hot-bed of yummy sourdough yeasts!