Does LME directly correlate to grain?

Lets say, for instance, that an AG batch of beer calls for 15lb Pale Malt as the main grain. Would the brewer be able to substitute out, say, 12lb with LME and get a fairly close end product (thus making the grain bill 12lb LME, 3lb Pale Malt)?

No it is not direct. It depends on liquid or dry but it is something like 70% if I remember correctly.

Here is the information I found:
Liquid Extract = .75 x Base #
Dry Extract = .6 x Base #

http://www.tedbrews.com/2009/02/all-grain-to-extract-recipe-conversion.html

Liquid Extract = .75 x Base #
Dry Extract = .6 x Base #

Click to expand...

Yup, there's your answer, although most all-grain recipes are written up with a certain efficiency in mind. Most published ones are 70-75% efficiency, but I've seen people here modify that based on their own setups. If you've got some brewing software it is pretty easy to just subtract all the base grain and add lme until you hit the same OG. If you don't have any brewing software, look up BrewTarget. A guy on here wrote it up and you can download it for free (although I'm sure he'd take donations).

FensterBos said:

Here is the information I found:
Liquid Extract = .75 x Base #
Dry Extract = .6 x Base #

Click to expand...

therefore, just using my example above:

if i were to want to switch out 12 lbs of grain from the full 15 and have only 3 in the mash, i would take the 12 lbs that i wasnt to substitute and multiply it by .75 thus giving me 9lbs of LME. Awesome! thanks for lurking for me!

Just remember that this is only for the base malts. You still need to steep your specialty grains. But I figure you already know that.

FensterBos said:

Just remember that this is only for the base malts. You still need to steep your specialty grains. But I figure you already know that.

Click to expand...

WAIT A SECOND!!! YOU STEEP SPECIALTY GRAINS!?!? oh man, ive ben just throwing em into the secondary all these times!!!

jk. thanks for all the help!!!

you can also use the free beertools.com recipe calculator to help you determine how much DME/LME to use when converting an all grain recipe, especially ones that don't reference the efficiency.

DME and LME have known gravity per pound / per gallon of wort which makes the math pretty forgiving.