Wow, I know we're noobs, but...

I brewed a Morebeer Dry Irish Stout Partial Mash this last weekend, gloriously entering into the realm of mashing! But it slowly dawned on me that my gravity is far higher than the style calls for; I measured around 1.061 after adding the LME, and the high end for a dry Irish is 1.050. At first I thought I had gotten some sort of insane efficiency (considering that I had to guesstimate water temp by mixing proportions of boiling and tap water, as my thermometer got wet inside ), but after running the numbers past the recipator, I got 50%. Hardly a commendable efficiency, but not sky high either. So crunching a few more numbers, I found that the necessary efficiency to strike the highest end of the style is on the order of 10%.

Wow. Ok ok, I know, this is a product largely aimed towards us noobs, but come on; have a little faith! You could get zero efficiency and still be in style! If I could get 50% off of blind temps, certainly the general public will get over 10% .

Anyway, just wanted to throw a little humor your way. The beer is fermenting ferociously now; I figure it'll be tasty anyhoo. It'll probably be a little on the malty side, which is fine, and the fact that a boil-over took out a lot of my hops isn't helping either .

EDIT:
for clarity, here is the recipe:
6# light LME

2.5# 2 row
1.5# flaked barley
1# Roasted Barley

1oz Magnum hops @60 min

1 Whirlfloc tablet @20 min

Doughed in with 1.25 gal
1st Sparge: 1 gal
2nd Sparge: .5 gal
Total boil vol: 2.75 gal

Hmm...what's your recipe look like. I've never trusted recipator. Once upon a time, before promash, I tried making a recipe using it. Somehow I had 10oz of hops and my IBU's were still reading 50 or so. That's when I realized that it sux. Just saying.

ProMash's efficiency scale goes down to 5%...and at 5%, my OG for a beer that reads 1.054 at 75% now reads 1.004 at 5%. So I don't know what you mean when you say "you could get zero efficiency and still be in style". No, if you got ZERO efficiency, your gravity would be 1.000. I know of no beer style which has 1.000 as an acceptable OG.

Did you use any top off water in the fermenter? It could be you didn't get it mixed enough and pulled a sample from a thicker portion of the wort.

Evan, I think your misunderstanding, or I wasn't clear enough, it's a Partial Mash (or PM, as I originally posted above), so there was 5 lbs of malt/grain and 6 lbs of LME included . Which at a points per gallon of 36 puts the OG of just the LME addition at 1.0432. So If I got zero percent efficiency, I'd still have an OG of 1.0432, right? Which is well within style .

Bradsul, I did indeed add water, but I measured the wort before adding the LME, and was reading about 1.026 x 3 gallons, which after LME additions and plugging into Beersmith also yields 1.058 @50% efficiency, so I'm not too far off theoretical here.

What grain and how much did you use?

2.5# 2 row
1.5# flaked barley
1# Roasted Barley

I added this above, sorry if I wasn't clear earlier!

I just did the rough (very rough) maths and it does seem like you are getting around 50%

The way I look at it is the majority of grains give 1030 - 1036 for a pound in a gallon

So your 5 pounds = 36x5 = 180 gravity points.
Split that over 5 gallons = 36 points

you say you got 1061 - 1.043 from the LME is 18 points.

(18/36)*100 = 50%

Thanks for running the maths, orfy . I would have done it myself if I knew the right equation; now I do!

Anyway, to reiterate, the whole point of the thread was to poke gentle fun at MB for expecting so little of their customers. No more, and no less .

I can't be bothered entering it in Beer smith so it's handy to know how to do it.
It's simple when you get your head round it.

If you look through the list it's amazing how many are around 1035/36

So if for a rough assed guide it's good to guess the majority of fermentables are around 1036.