marc1

What's your volume and starting gravity?

And you're saying that was too much water? Was that your "good" starter or the "too diluted" one? Your starter in the picture is...

You can't read alcohol content in beer with a hydrometer. You need to read the SG and then use a calculation involving the OG and...

To diagnose efficiency issues, you need to collect the measurements that let you calculate both conversion efficiency (how much of the...

Can you explain what you did with your starter? You want to make a starter with wort not water.

You are using a refractometer for SG measurements, not a hydrometer. Refractometers get "confused" when alcohol is present, as they are...

Yes. This is an all grain recipe, so steeping in a mesh bag needs to be done differently than for an extract recipe. You are doing a...

I'm wondering if you got low extract efficiency. That could make it taste bland. What was the OG?

Best answered by @sarandos25, but I assumed the "brewing water" (source water) was low (2ppm), my reply was referring to the target...

If the water testing was correct there is low Ca in the brewing water.

I'm not sure what could be in your tap water that would cause it to be that low. Massive amounts of calcium? You're getting it tested...

Okay not the malt then, otherwise there would be hundreds of posts with this issue. Not sure if this question has been asked. How do...

Distilled water is basically all 0s for mineral content, so plug that into your brewing software. I'd expect the pH to come out a lot...

Nice job. The mystery deepens. Even if you mashed with distilled water it should not be that low. I'm not sure what could be in your...

OK... really excited to share the results; curious to see the reactions to them: Test: 500gr Weyermann Pale Ale 1.5 liters of source...