Low Yield

i have bottled 2 batches(an IPA and a stout). both times i have had a low yield. i am only bottling @ 4 gallons per batch. between the gravity readings, dry hopping, and transferring to a secondary, i am getting a lot of waste. both beers had an OG over 1.065, as well as late additions like chocolate and hops. both beers are delicious, i wish there was more. i have a pumpkin ale that has instructions for a secondary for clarifying and i was going to add some vanilla to. at this point i think i'm better off leaving it in the primary. is this normal to lose this much?

akimbo78 said:

i have bottled 2 batches(an IPA and a stout). both times i have had a low yield. i am only bottling @ 4 gallons per batch. between the gravity readings, dry hopping, and transferring to a secondary, i am getting a lot of waste. both beers had an OG over 1.065, as well as late additions like chocolate and hops. both beers are delicious, i wish there was more. i have a pumpkin ale that has instructions for a secondary for clarifying and i was going to add some vanilla to. at this point i think i'm better off leaving it in the primary. is this normal to lose this much?

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How many gravity readings are you taking? You need to take two. One each on on different days to determine if they are the same, indicating fermentation is complete.

Maybe try not dry hopping for a batch or two and produce some beer not requiring that process.

I cannot speak to the pumpkin ale, but many of us do not use a secondary. Personally, I just leave my beer in the primary for a couple of weeks. As I have it in a refrigerator I am satisfied with the clarity of me beer.

you need to adjust your recipes to fit your your system. Not everyone has the same losses from tuns, racking readings, or get the same efficiency. Small amounts, but they add up by the time bottling comes around

Try to find recipes that produce 5.5 gallons instead of just 5. The 5.5 gallon kind usually factor in all the losses you will encounter (trub, hydro samples, etc...) so you are left with ~5 gallons of usable beer

Use a refractometer for your readings, you'll only use a fraction of what a hydrometer uses. Just be aware that the FG reading is not straightforward - you'll need a spreadsheet or web-based conversion to get the gravity of the finished beer.

Every transfer wastes beer. Where possible, avoid secondaries.

Start larger (my favorite solution).

I'm curious though - where do YOU think the beer is going? You know your process better than we do. So give us a rough accounting. If you can identify how much is lost at each point in the process, the problem will almost solve itself.

frazier said:

Use a refractometer for your readings, you'll only use a fraction of what a hydrometer uses. Just be aware that the FG reading is not straightforward - you'll need a spreadsheet or web-based conversion to get the gravity of the finished beer.

Every transfer wastes beer. Where possible, avoid secondaries.

Start larger (my favorite solution).

I'm curious though - where do YOU think the beer is going? You know your process better than we do. So give us a rough accounting. If you can identify how much is lost at each point in the process, the problem will almost solve itself.

Click to expand...

i thought refractometers were only good for OG. don't they lose their accuracy once alcohol is present?

as far as my process goes, i know i lost a lot in the second batch when i dry hopped with pellets into a glass carboy. they never dropped and i did not contain them in any manner. when i transferred to secondary there was quite a bit of trub on the bottom because i did not strain from the boil. i need to verify that my buckets are labeled correctly. i do a partial boil and top off to @ 5.25 gallons after cooling using water bottles. i am not surprised at loss , but losing a gallon + seems like a lot.

When transferring to secondary and/or bottling bucket, do you tip your bucket/carboy and leave it for a while? I grab a scrap of 2x4 and set one edge of my bucket on it and leave it for an hour or two. Trub slides right down to the "corner" and settles. I don't lose much from transfer by doing this compared to just leaving the bucket level.

i thought refractometers were only good for OG. don't they lose their accuracy once alcohol is present?

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There's a moderately complicated way of calculating FG from a refractometer reading.

One of the reasons I stopped using secondaries for most beers was the volume loss. There are many other reasons to leave a beer in the fermenter, but that's a big one.

I usually take a small hit on OG by making 5.5 gallons so I have 5 at bottling/kegging. Or some styles I will augment with a 1/2 lb of sugar, honey, or invert syrup to hit an equivalent gravity at 5.5 gallons vs designed 5.

how long are you giving your beers before you transfer them? the longer you allow them to sit in the primary the more compact the cake will be and the less you'll lose.

It would seem like a basic problem to solve. Most of what I have read is an average of 1/2 gallon is typically lost to processing (post-boil), I tend to lose a little more.

Besides agreeing with everyone has already written here, my thoughts are either add 1 to 1.5 gallons of water to your wort before pitching or find an accurate measuring device and fill and mark all of your containers so you can monitor the volumes throughout the entire process!

Good luck and keep on brewing!

dcp27 said:

how long are you giving your beers before you transfer them? the longer you allow them to sit in the primary the more compact the cake will be and the less you'll lose.

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Good point, hadn't thought about that before

KevinW said:

It would seem like a basic problem to solve. Most of what I have read is an average of 1/2 gallon is typically lost to processing (post-boil), I tend to lose a little more.

Besides agreeing with everyone has already written here, my thoughts are either add 1 to 1.5 gallons of water to your wort before pitching or find an accurate measuring device and fill and mark all of your containers so you can monitor the volumes throughout the entire process!

Good luck and keep on brewing!

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i am still doing extract kits until my noob stops showing, so i have been following the brew day instructions as they are written by AHS. i have been nailing the OG's and FG's per their instructions. i am letting them ferment for a week, then checking the gravity. if i hit the suggested FG (every time) i am then transferring to a secondary for the additions. check the gravity gain after a week. if it hasn't moved then i'm bottling. i'm going to let the pumpkin sit for 2 weeks in the primary, no secondary and see what the difference is. thanks everyone for you help.

update for those that care...i did transfer to secondary, because i tasted my hydro sample and the spice wasn't where i wanted it to be. i added a stick of cinnamon soaked in whiskey and a teaspoon of vanilla. i let it sit for 3 days and bottled last night with brown sugar. i finally had 5 gallons to bottle with. i attribute the gain in yield to topping off to 5.25 gallons, and straining the wort. i was also better at siphoning than in previous batches.

I used refractometers for OG and FG for a while and it worked fine. Few drops of beer is all it takes. I did check it against a hydrometer few times to make sure it wasn't off.
Only issue with refractometers is that dark beers gets too blurry to define an exact reading, so precision is affected.
I now moved to a digital refractometer, loving it.
I used the following formulas to convert the readings from brix to gravity. Easier if you know how to use excel and plug in a formula. Other formulas area available. These worked for me.

OG = 1.000019+0.003865613*OGbrix+0.00001296425*(OGbrix^2)+0.00000005701128*(OGbrix^3)

FG=1.001843-0.002318474*(OGbrix)-0.000007775*(OGbrix^2)-0.000000034*(OGbrix^3)+0.00574*(FGbrix)+0.00003344*(FGbrix^2)+0.000000086*(FGbrix^3)