salt rising bread starter

After many attempts to get a Salt Rising Bread starter to come to life I finally used my bean to arrive at a solution.  The scalded milk always had granular corn meal (no matter what brand I used) sitting in the bottom like sand - dead.  So, I tried mixing good old Albers (which had failed me many times in the past) with the sugar and dampened it, covered it and let it sit in my warming box for two hours and then proceeded with the rest of the starter process.  Eureka, success!  I have since tried this with many of the other partially used corn meals in my pantry with equal success.