98% efficiency

I brewed a Belgium Golden Ale yesterday that and got 98% eff. using a 3 hr direct fired slow ramp up from 99 to 168 and transferring to a 5 gallon rubbermaid cooler lauter tun and doing 1 gallon sparges until the wort was running clear

6# dingemans Pilsner
1# Dingemans aromatic
1# caramel Pils
.5# Biscuit malt

1.5 oz Stryian Goldings at 60 min
.5 oz Saaz at 20
.5 oz Saaz at 15
.5 oz saaz at 5

Im using this beer as a yeast cake for a big Belgium Golden strong ale

Somehow that doesn't seem right.

How much wort did you collect and what was your final volume collected in the fermenter?

Did you hand rinse every grain?

there might have been some concentration from the boil off but not alot. my projected OG was 1.044 and i got an OG of 1.051. I then used promash to find out what the eff would need to be in order to get the OG i had using the grain bill i did.

and the grain was crushed with the rollers set at the 1'oclock position

I'm gettig an efficiency at 81% which seems more reasonable. Make sure you have all of the settings in there correct, dead space, loss to chillers etc. That will really affect the brewhouse efficiency.

I just used the recipe calculator to get the efficiency. For a 5 gallon brew 1.051 is 81%. 98%, which is basically impossible, would get you 1.062 OG.

I'll bet you have the "measurement taken from fermenter" option selected. Even though I do take my measurement from the fermenter, it's never right. It usually reads 100% eff. if I select that option. And I know I'm not getting 100%.

that makes more sense

That's too bad. I was going to nominate you for God in '08.

Haha, 98% would be the type of efficiency God himself might resign over.