A blast from the past

My wife was going through the cabinets last week and hauled out two packets of dried starter.  One was a survivor from our move from South Africa to the US, dating back to October 2011.  So, just a couple of months away from being 14 years old.  Mind you, this has received no special treatment, having been tucked away in one cabinet or another at room temperature.  It has also survived a second move in 2020 when I retired and we moved from Kansas back to Michigan.  The natural question was "I wonder if this is still any good?"

The packet, still looking like it did when it was first made:

There were 7 grams of starter in the packet.  I mixed it with 43 grams of AP flour and 50 grams of water:

Room temperature was about 75F.  Twenty four hours later, it looked like this:

There's maybe just the tiniest bit of expansion.  The bubbles are the same ones that were visible in the "just fed" photograph, above.

At 48 hours after feeding, it looked like this:

It had peaked a few hours earlier and is already starting to recede in this photo.  There's some free liquid at the bottom which has separated from the main body of the starter.  Top view:

I discarded most of it and gave it my typical feeding: some whole wheat, whole rye, and AP flours with enough water to make it a soft dough.  It is sitting on the counter and I'll see how it responds.  

Overall, I'm both surprised and pleased that the starter was still viable after all of these years.  While not abused, it certainly hasn't had kid glove treatment, either.  

The new question is "What am I going to do with a second starter?"  Maybe I'll have to pit the two clones against each other to see which performs best, just in case the other offshoot I've been using since 2011 has lost some oomph along the way.  

Paul