I have tried a couple of sourdoughs but mine nearly always end up with a lot of alcohol (acetone smell, bitter liquid). As OA says, you can just scrape the liquid off the top and feed the sourdough to refresh it, but then the bread I bake has a slight acetoney taste.
Suggestion: add a description of the sourdough after each day so people have a rough idea if their sourdough is growing. The photo helps - you get a lot of bubbles after around day 3 or 4 and the volume doubles.
You're describing a starter that is too 'old'. Very 'young' starters have little flavour, and then get sweet and honey-like before getting souuuuuur. Personally I'd recommend just leaving it on the counter and going to a 24 hour or 12 hour feeding schedule.
Flavour: you can absolutely scrape the bad stuff off the top and feed the starter to keep it alive. But if you're going to bake, remember that you're blending out the original product... If you start with some 'alcohol' or 'vomit' and mix out half, bread made the next day will be 33% bad-stuff. You want to mix out for say a week or so to get back to mostly tastey happy stuff.
Also: not sure if this applies, but in general making a mature starter is a 5 week process from scratch. Bubbles in the first few days are generally bad bacteria dying in the container you're using... You can still bake with it, but keep going for a week and a half and see what kind of lovely smells start coming :)
I've always heard it called 'hooch', which I find really charming for some reason.
Must have another bash at it soon, thanks.
I think what you describe is natural. Don't worry. As you feed the mother dough from time to time that taste will diminish.