Centennial Blonde OG way too high!

I'm not a total noob at this gig, but I had a noob moment today.

Decided to make Biermuncher's Centennial Blonde. Converted to a partial mash recipe from tastybrew.com calculator as follows:

Batch size 5.5 gal
Boil Volume 3.5 gal
Nottingham Yeast

3# Extra Pale DME
3# Two-row
.75# CaraFoam (didn't have CaraPils)
.5# Vienna
.5# Crystal 10

Mashed grains @ 150 (per muncher's instructions) at a thickness of 1.7 qt/lb to keep my mash voluume around 2 gallons. Everything went peachy; however, my OG reading after filling my primary bucket was 1.068 @ room temp. Regardless of adjustments, I missed my mark by about 30 grav. points..

I adjusted by racking off about a gallon into a smaller carboy (aka milk jug) and diluted to 1.041.

I know I rectified the problem, but does anyone see where I went wrong with this ordeal?

You should have done some reading of similar threads or posted before you tried to "rectify" the problem, because you would have found out there was no problem, and you didn't have to do anything.

We get this question every day

It's a pretty common issue for ANYONE topping off with water in the fermenter (and that includes partial mashes, extract or all grain revcipes) to have an error in reading the OG...In fact, it is actually nearly impossible to mix the wort and the top off water in a way to get an accurate OG reading...

Brewers get a low reading if they get more of the top off water than the wort, conversely they get a higher number if they grabbed more of the extract than the top off water in their sample.

When I am doing an extract with grain recipe I make sure to stir for a minimum of 5 minutes (whipping up a froth to aerate as well) before I draw a grav sample and pitch my yeast....It really is an effort to integrate the wort with the top off water...This is a fairly common new brewer issue we get on here...unless you under or over topped off or the final volume for the kit was 5 gallons and you topped off to 5.5, then the issue, sorry to say, is "operator error"

More than likely your true OG is really what it's supposed to be. And it will mix itself fine during fermentation.

The only reason I was confused is that I've done every batch except my first as partials and my numbers have never been this far off..

So you're saying that by diluting my wort after topping, I actually over-diluted?

I'm saying more than likely you didn't mix well enough, wort and water don't mix all that easier, so you grabbed a sample that wasn't cohesive and it gave you a false reading.

Thw wort and water would mix fine during the agitation of fermentation, but at the gravity reading it was skewed.