Batch size is ?????

Is it the amount of brew once it is bottled? Amount that will go into the bottle bucket? The amount that will go into he fermentation carboy???

I was looking in Brewing Classic Styles and the have.

7 gallon boil
6 gallons at the end
5.5 gallons going into the fermenter
5 gallons into bottles

So is batch size 5 gallons or 5.5??? Seems logical but I've never SEEN it in print.

and YES - I did a search!!! very helpful.

My understanding is that batch size is the volume you have after boiling and top-up (if top-up is added).

So you have 7 pre-boil, 6 post-boil, leave .5 gallons in the kettle with the trub, and then leave .5 gallons in the fermenter with the yeast.

So you have a 6 gallon batch size with a gallon of loss for a total of 5 gallons of finished beer.

My batch size is the amount remaining at the end of the boil. To use your example, it would be 6-gallons.

Jamil's recipes are all calculated for 6 gallons, the amount in the kettle at flame out.

Grinder12000 said:

and YES - I did a search!!! very helpful.

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Orfy tends to be that way:

orfy said:

Final Batch size.

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The word "Final" tells me that he considers it to be the fermented volume.

You could "Claim" that every batch of beer you make is refined from the trillions of gallons of water on the planet. What difference does it make?

cmgray said:

My understanding is that batch size is the volume you have after boiling and top-up (if top-up is added).

So you have 7 pre-boil, 6 post-boil, leave .5 gallons in the kettle with the trub, and then leave .5 gallons in the fermenter with the yeast.

So you have a 6 gallon batch size with a gallon of loss for a total of 5 gallons of finished beer.

Click to expand...

I think 7 pre boil, 6 post boil, 5.5 goes into fermenter and 5 goes into bottles leaving 1/2 gallon of trub in the primary.

You want to transfer your trub to your primary since there are plenty of nutrients in there for yeast to have fun with over the course of fermentation.

I take batch size as the amount of finished beer I have which is usually 4.8-5 gallons. I almost never have more than 5 gallons and usually a qt or so less..Especially with AG, with extract beers I used to always get the 54 12 oz bottles or whatever the amount is 'supposed' to be but as long as I hit my pre-boil OG and post boil OG I'm good to go...now when I bottle I assume 50 bottles and sanitize this amount and usually have a few empties left over.

using beersmith to input Jamil's recipe's:

(make sure your evap. rate is set to 15%, which is assumed for the book)

he lists a pre-boil volume as 7 gallons (26.5L)
6 gallons (22.7L) into kettle
5.5 gallons (20.8L) into fermenter
5 gallons (18.9L) packaged beer

beersmith has the batch size at 6 gallons (22.7L)...the amount in the kettle at flame out as posted by flyangler18.

Well - now that we have three different answers! I see there is a problem LOL

For entering the recipes into Beersmith (or others), the batch size is 6 gallons (post-boil amount). This is the batch size that you will use to determine your ingredient amounts since your OG is set after it's boiled and cooled (unless you add fermentables or top-up water to the primary or secondary).

EDIT: actually, re-reading it, the "recipes are designed to leave 6 gallons of wort in the kettle at the end of boil", yet the evaporation rate is 15% and the boil time is 1 hour (boils off 1.05 gal, leaving 5.95 gal, close enough I guess). Cooling from there at 4% loss would be 5.71 gal. So it looks like 5.71 gal batch size will determine your ingredient amounts.

Batch size (when posted in recipes) I've always understood to be the amount of wort that goes into the fermenter. If you're using it for calculations and whatnot this is what I would go with.

ProMash's batch size is the end-of-boil wort volume.

I find I prefer to think of my batch size as the packaged volume, though.

Bob

Pivzavod said:

You want to transfer your trub to your primary since there are plenty of nutrients in there for yeast to have fun with over the course of fermentation.

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That's partially true. You want to transfer SOME trub to primary. (And it's not the end of the world if most of it gets in there.) In the homebrew world, it's hard not to get some no matter how hard you try to prevent it. Too much trub in the primary can result in off-flavors, especially in cleaner-tasting beers.

Surely the definition of "batch" depends on what you're trying to achieve by calling it a "batch". If you end up with a single bottle of beer because you continually re-rack to remove trub, etc. then it is reasonable to say your batch was 12oz. If you're talking about batch size in order to define the boil then it doesn't matter how much you throw away after cooling the wort, what's important is hop utilization, etc. and the batch seems to be more commonly defined as the end-of-boil volume.

I ended up with 5gallons of Nut Brown at the end of my boil and I consider it a 5 gallon batch. I left the sediment in the pot and now I have a little over 4.5 gallons but I think I still made a 5 gallon batch.

But then I'm a noob.

Although I'm well into my John Palmer which arrived the other day.

The question is - what is "batch" when you are plugging in numbers in software.

Grinder12000 said:

The question is - what is "batch" when you are plugging in numbers in software.

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I suspect it varies from one software package to the next. Look up the definition of batch size, sometimes also referred to as "final volume," in the help section of the software you are using.

IIRC, BeerSmith defined final volume as the amount of finished wort going into the fermenter (someone please correct me if I am wrong). However, because I have no losses to kettle trub (I pour everything except the hops into my fermenter), it is equivalent to the amount of wort left in my kettle at the end of the boil. Other packages may define final volume differently.

It's a good question, and non-trivial. Here's my thoughts, which are worth exactly what you pay for them:

I use Beersmith software for my calculations. When I formulate a recipe, I formulate for the final volume in the boiler after cooling. This is not the same as the volume into the fermenter, due to (a) not being able to transfer 100% of the wort volume, and, more importantly, (b) absorption of wort by the hops.

Typically, I use numbers of 8 gallons preboil for a 60 minute batch, boil it down to about 6 gallons after cooling, and transfer 5 1/2 to 5 3/4 gallons into the fermenter, depending on hops volume.