Accounting for volume loss when racking to bottling bucket for priming sugar

Hi!

I am using the Caribou Slobber brown ale kit from Northern Brewer. The instructions say to use 2/3 cup of priming sugar in 16 oz of water. I am assuming this is for the full 5 gallon batch. From what I have heard, the best way to mix the priming sugar solution with the beer is to add the boiled (and cooled) mixture to the bottom of the botting bucket, and then rack the beer on top.

When I rack from my bucket fermenter to the bottling bucket, I am assuming there will be some loss of volume. How does this affect my priming sugar amounts? I am aware of the calculators available online, but I really won't be aware of my final volume until I rack it over. By this point my sugar mixture should have already been in the bucket.

What is the best way to go about this? I want to ensure I don't over or under carbonate. Is it ok to add top up water to bring the volume back up to 5 gallons?

Thanks!

I wouldn't worry too much about loss on a 5 gallon batch, but i also wouldn't use volume measurement on the priming sugar.
I add 5 oz. to all my 5 gallon batches and have had no problems.
I usually end up closer to 4-1/2 gallons in the end.

Agreed. Figure 10% for trub loss and calculate sugar for that depending on the volumes of CO2 that you want. In the end you might be off by 3%, but that will be un detectable.

See this post on priming sugar:
http://woodlandbrew.blogspot.com/2012/10/priming-with-corn-syrup.html

You'll notice there is a huge difference in sugar required from 1 to 3 volumes, so the 3% error you are likely to have will be marginal.

I usually lose about 1/2 to 3/4 of a gallon of beer depending on if I dry hop or not which is why I actually usually make my recipes 5.75 gallons. I would assume you are going to get about 5 gallons, type it into the calculator, and then just prime to the lower end of the acceptable level of the style.

Thanks for the replies! I'll do some trub loss estimates based on what you guys said and then make comparisons with the calculator and the instructions to see if they are in range.

This is a little off topic, but may be something to consider. For my last two extract kits, I used paint strainer bags, a 5 gallon bag to contain the hops during the boil, and a 1 gallon bag to dry hop the Lagunitas IPA clone that got bottled today. Using the bags, I've cut my trub loss to virtually zero (not counting the yeast cake). After topping off my 2 1/2~3 gallon boils to 5~5 1/4 gallons, I'm bottling 4.8 to 5 gallons.

So you are seeing 4%-5% trub loss? That's pretty good.