First Batch Is Bottled

Well, I bottled my Sierra Nevada Pale Ale clone today... only yielded 35 bottles. I'm a little disappointed because I followed the recipe and filled with enough water to make 5 gallons. It'll do for my first batch though. We'll see how it tastes. I tasted a little bit of the excess in one bottle and it tasted about right. We'll see if the carbonation builds up for me the way I want it to.

Any ideas on what might have happened that I would have only yielded 35 bottles, ie. around 3.5 gallons?

Was your fermenter full to the 5 gallon mark? Was there a lot of trub in the bottom?

Were your gravity readings higher than anticipated?

I just bottled my first batch today as well and got roughly 3.5 gallons into bottles. I was right around 5 gallons in primary so I'm assuming a good chunk of the loss was to trub. However, my bottling bucket was leaking so I lost a decent amount there too.

Gravity readings were spot on. I made sure the fermenter was filled with the correct amount. I think it might have been due to trub. There was definitely a lot of trub in my primary, less in my secondary, and next to none when it came to the bottling bucket.

So you lost some due to a good portion of the volume in the primary being trub. You also lose some volume when every time your transfer your beer, primary-->secondary-->bottling bucket.

Another benefit of month long primaries, a tighter sediment layer and greater seperation between beer and trub. So carefull racking means you get all the beer off the surface of the trub. And no loss due to unnecessary racking.

I generally pull about 52 bottles/5 gallon batch. I've never had less than 48, and quite often get 54.

Using my bottling bucket dip tube design helps too.

What kind of bottles are you using. a lot of PET bottles from brew houses are 16 ounces. So if that is the case then you really have about 45, 12 oz beers. Ask me how I know...

Nah, I picked my bottles up this morning... they're 12oz bottles.