44 beers instead of 48?

Hey guys,
I just bottled my first batch. It was Brewers Best Micro Style Pale Ale and boy did it smell great. It has a nice color and while flat, tastes good too. The problem is that I was expecting to bottle 48 and only had enough for 44. I figure This is due to evaporation loss during brewing and the "satellite" bottle I used to monitor gravity. I must confess I took just enough for an additional hydrometer reading to check to see if satellite was accurate and didn't return it to batch but drank it. I also drank the remainder that wouldn't fill last bottle to proper level.

My question is, how do I ensure a full batch next brew without effecting the expected gravities of the recipe?

You don't. You follow the recipe and accept that there will be losses due to evaporation and trub.

Sometimes I have 44 bottles, sometimes 52. If you make good beer that you love to drink, then you did it right, no matter how many bottles you have.

Yuri_Rage said:

You don't. You follow the recipe and accept that there will be losses due to evaporation and trub.

Click to expand...

Sounds to me like a well seasoned answer; I'll accept the 4 bottle loss. Thanks for your response!

when I make all grain batches I shoot for 5.5 gallons to compensate for approx 1/2 gallons of losses through trub, racking and evaporation. you could add water and malt extract up to 5.5 gallons for an extract batch. it still varies between 49-53 bottles per 5 gallon batch.

You also forget the silly idea of a satellite...It is not an accurate measure of gravity. 12 ounces of beer ferment at a much different rate as a 5 gallon batch does, so it serves no purpose...Satellites are an antiquated idea, and is really a waste of beer...you lose far less taking two to 3 grav readings then you do using a satellite....

Also I use a bottling bucket dip tube, it picks up all but about 4 ounces of from my bucket. I usually end up with about 54- or 55 beers that way.

I also have a dip tube in my bucket, that way I get every last drop except about 4 ounces of my precious beer.



It's a simple rubber stopper that fits in the back of the bottling bucket spigot, and a bent piece of copper tubing. You could bend any piece of plastic tubing as well, ball point pen body, piece of racking tube...



But honestly, once you get a pipeline going, a few bottles here and there will not matter, especially if it's a sacrifice we pay for making great beer.

Basically, if you want to be sure to have 48 bottles, you have to have more than that in the batch, since there are inevitable losses - and by doing that, you will have more than 48, but never any particular exact number each time. It can also be useful to have some different sized bottles if you want to end up with more beer in bottles and less drunk flat. I always drink the hydrometer sample, as I don't want to put something with the additional opportunities to get contaminated back in the batch, but by having some odd-sized bottles on hand can usually keep the partial bottle left at the end under 4 oz. At least tasting the hydrometer sample is, IMHO, an important step in brewing education - it's not terribly pleasant at the wort stage, for instance, but you get an idea over the life of a batch as to what changes, and what stays the same.

I do volume in the following manner: Amount my secondaries (which don't need headspace to speak of) will hold, really, not their nominal volume. Add between a quart and a half gallon to account for trub and other losses - that's my target volume for going into primary. I know where that is on the side of my (full volume) boil pot, which is one guide as to when to stop boiling, or add more water, or boil longer. I also have marks on the outside of my primary. Number of bottles per batch - varies all over the map since I use 750ml, 20 oz, 16 oz, 12 oz and 8oz bottles in a quasi-random manner.