Low yield batch

Hello! I just bottled a nice Pumkpin Ale but was disappointed when I ended with only 40 bottles. I had almost a full 5 inches of trub in my carboy. The 40 bottles add up to only 3.75 gallons of beer from a 5 gallon carboy.

Is there anything I can do to salvage more of my beer?

Thanks for your ideas.

John Long said:

Hello! I just bottled a nice Pumkpin Ale but was disappointed when I ended with only 40 bottles. I had almost a full 5 inches of trub in my carboy. The 40 bottles add up to only 3.75 gallons of beer from a 5 gallon carboy.

Is there anything I can do to salvage more of my beer?

Thanks for your ideas.

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Five inches of trub is a lot. Hmmm, maybe as you transfer from the boil kettle you could watch how much is entering the system. Then, by using a secondary tank your beer will clear a bit.

Of course, you may want to increase your batch size at the beginning to make certain you end up with five gallons at the end. there are probably a number of other factors to consider as well.

I think most people aim for around 5.5 gallons to account for the trub. Another half gallon would yield another 4-5 bottles for you.

As Gammon said, though, five inches of trub seems like a lot. I don't filter out anything from my kettle, nor use a secondary, and I haven't seen much more than an inch in my primaries.

From what i understand, if you use actual pumpkin there always seems to be a huge amount of trub. I'm not sure there is anyway around that besides bumping up the batch size a little to account for the loss. I usually do that for batches that i dry hop since i know the hops will suck up a good amount of beer.

How long was the beer in the carboy? The longer you let it sit, the more the trub at the bottom will compact.

My APA had 3 or 4 inches of trub on day one, by day 10 it had only an inch or so.

Filter??? sorry thats me being a Sh*t because i got a filter setup for christmas... I would sugest cold clearing... read about it in a HB book at the book store... Store the beer at as close to 32F as you can but keep it from freezeing, do this for sevral day and the turb will all settle out at the bottom because the water will be lighter then the desce turb... its like cold crashing though it causes alot of yeast to drop out of solution and can cause piriming problems and you temp bring on a condtion called "chill haze" which is a cloudiness to your brew... but it does reduce the size of the trub by a significant ammount... I do it sometime if my cider wont clear on its own, give it a shot... you got 40 good bottles already if you can get a few more then its a bonas and if you cant then its no loss...

Cheers

Pumpkin is famous for leaving huge amounts of trub. You might get a bit more by cold-crashing, letting it sit for an extra month or filtering.

First off I am impressed that you got 40 bottles out of 3.75 gallons. I will get about 46 out of 5 full gallons.

Pumpkin is notorious for huge amounts of trub. You could increase the batch size or make 2 batches. But again, everything I have read about pumpkin beers is huge amounts of trub.

I used fresh baked pumpkins and it sat in primary for more than three weeks. I filled the carboy to its 5 gallon limit before pitching.

I'll just assume it was the pumpkin.

Thanks!