Raisin Yeast Water Producing "Yogurty" Levains
For over a year now, I have kept a bottle of raisin yeast water going. I use it in many of my bakes, and a 1-qt bottle would typically last 2-4 weeks. So rough math, I refreshed it 18-20 times over the last year. I used SunMaid raisins as the fruit, local raw honey as the sugar source, and either pink salt or sea salt for minerals (depending on whatever salt I grabbed week-to-week).
My normal refresh... 200g RYW, 700g water, 35g honey, 3.5g salt. Combine and ferment at 76 deg F for 1.5-2 days until nice and bubbly when shaken. It has been very consistent. Until my last refresh...
The last two levains I've made (white bread flour at 120% hydration) are noticeably sour with a yogurt aroma after 12 hours at 70-72 deg F.
It's possible that I somehow contaminated the RYW with LABs from my starter. Not sure how, but definitely use my RYW in my sourdough bakes. I also just read a recipe in Bread where raw honey and sea salt are used to leaven dough with the sea salt activating the LAB and wild yeast in the raw honey (recipe states it has to be raw honey), but the temperatures cited are higher than what I typically refresh at. I also changed raisins. Bought a bag of Eillein's, and now looking closer at the label, I see they have the palm oil/sunflower oil glaze.
Has anyone ran into this before? I know that's not much to go on and the possibilities are endless. Just curious if the regular RYW users have had a batch go "sour". Ironically, the RYW does not smell sour at all. Smells normal, although it lacks that "beer" smell they can get after sitting in the refrigerator for a while. Maybe an indication that I've lost the yeast and the bubbles I'm seeing are from LABs?
My dilemma now... Do I refresh the "sour" RYW because the levain it produces is unique and different than my regular SD starter. :-)