Why is my yield so low?

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dirtylarry

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I just bottled my 2nd 5 gallon batch (Schlenkerla's Quaffable Irish Red) and I only ended up with 36 12oz bottles. It didn't seem like I left a lot of usable beer in the primary, and there was only a few drops left in the bottling bucket. What gives?
 
That sounds like a lot of wasted beer. Are you sure your volume measurements are right? Did you really start with 5 gallons? Did you let it sit for a few days after fermentation to let the yeast sediment settle and compact? Are you racking from the primary to the bottling bucket, or trying to pour carefully?
 
I'm sure I started with 5 gallons. Primary went for 3 weeks. All the sediment was pretty well compacted. Racked from primary to bottling bucket.
 
I assume since this is your 2nd batch that it was extract right?

Did you whirlpool the wort after the boil, and pour the clarified worth through a strainer to remove hops before it went into the primary?
 
Calibrate your buckets, carboys, fermentors whatever. If you are relying on some factory marking on a large volume container to tell you the truth, there is an excellent chance you are way off.

If you do not have an accurate gallon measure, buy a gallon of milk, mark the level of the milk with a sharpie, and this will be your reference gallon. Fill your buckets, carboys, whatever, with water a gallon at a time, and mark them. Do the same with your brewpot, fill a gallon at a time and make a dipstick out of a piece of wooden dowel.

You are bottling 3.8 gallons of beer. Pretty hard to "lose" a gallon of wort/beer. But a 5 gallon original wort could easily "shrink" that much due to trub, racking loss, bottling loss, gravity readings/taste testings, and incorrect volume measurements using large containers.
 
I think that is your problem. I'll assume you are boiling in a pot without a drain valve, and no wort chiller. When you are done boiling set your pot in a sink full of ice water to cool down. Use a sanitized spoon and give it a good spin to draw all the trub (spent hops) to the bottom. Keep the lid on while the wort cools. When the wort is cool, carefully pour the clarified wort through a strainer - a wire mesh strainer works well - into your primary fermenter. You can add any top-up water at this time to get to the 5 gallon mark. Proceed as usual, and you should get 48 - 52 bottles.
 
Just realized another potential problem: Am I gonna have bottle bombs on this batch? I carbed with 5 oz corn sugar :/
 
here's the deal.. you're probably going to lose some each time you rack. According to Papizan (sp?) 5.5 gal in the fermenter = a 5 gal batch. I've found this to be pretty true. I now shoot for 6 gal after boil which pretty much guarantees 5.5 gal in the fermenter (I loose a little in the kettle 'cause I want to leave the hops etc behind.) A couple extra pounds of grain isn't that much and worth getting your full batch. :)
 
I've found, brewing at 6,000' near Denver, that I lose a full gallon to a 60 minute boil. For an extract-only beer, I start the boil with 6 1/2 gallons (full boil) and end up bottling a little less than 5 gallons. My one partial mash so far started at 6 1/2 but I'll only bottle about 4 3/4 due to the extra trub losses. Next time I'll start with a smidgen less than 7 gallons.
 
I risk skewing the topic, but the subject of "getting to the right volume" is something I was wrong-headed in for a while. I'd simply add top-up water to reach some desired volume.
Now, I take an OG reading & use info from my...favorite...book "Designing Great Beers".

Say you read 1.068, & you've 4 gallons, then 68 * 4 = 272 total GU's.(Gravity Units).

Suppose your recipe target OG is 1.054.
If I decide to top up to a volume of 6 gallons, what would my OG be?

272 / 6 = 45.33, or 1.045, and I've missed my target.

Instead I could determine precisely how much water to add with: 272 / 54 = 5.04.
So, if I top up to a total of 5.04 gallons, I'll nail my intended OG of 1.054.

My two new mantras are:
- "add water based on target OG, not target volume"
- "better to have 3.8 gallons of great beer, than 5 gallons of mediocre beer"
 
Just realized another potential problem: Am I gonna have bottle bombs on this batch? I carbed with 5 oz corn sugar :/

5oz of corn sugar into 3.8 gallons of beer at 65F will result (under ideal conditions) in 3.4 volumes of CO2, or 39.5 PSI (If you where kegging).

Beersmith flashes a WARNING INJURY COULD RESULT! at PSIs over 40 (for kegs), I have no idea how much a bottle can take. Increasing carbing temperature is going to make it worse.

I'd put the bottles into plastic storage bins and put a towel or tarp over them :D
 
I really appreciate the info on this thread, as I constantly have this problem... I always seem to come up short at pitching and with the final product at kegging/bottling. It's almost consistent that I am only getting 4 gallons of wort at pitching or usually at best 4.5. I do partial mash batches, so wonder if I am not sparging well enough to get the proper yield from the grain? Also, I will check my fermentation bucket and manually mark to make sure how far off it is as I previously checked this and saw a discrepancy.

The other reason that I know I am off is when kegging I am at the 4 gallon range a lot. I do strain my hops when trasfering from the kettle to the fermenter so can see that this would cause me to lose some wort. The worst that I've ever experienced was this weekend when I did an imperial IPA with 1lb of hops and only ended up with 3.5 gallons at pitching and undershot my OG by 6 points... Any further input or direction would be appreciated.
 
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