What volume do you aim for?

Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum

Help Support Homebrew Talk - Beer, Wine, Mead, & Cider Brewing Discussion Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

GMP428

Member
Joined
Jan 14, 2012
Messages
24
Reaction score
3
Location
ANTIOCH
When doing a typical 5 gallon batch, or 10 or whatever volume your recipe called for; is that the pre fermentation volume, or is it the volume that you go for minus trub loss??? This is something I've always wondered. I myself have pitched yeast with both about 5 gallons of wort as well as a little bit more to give me 5 gallons after fermentation. The differences in the 2 are probably very minute but they are still present. What is the correct volume to have pre Germantown, and iftit really doesn't matter what do a lot of you guys go for and why?
 
Pre-fermentation* lol. For some reason my homebrewtalk app was glitchy and I was typing blindly for those last 2 lines.
 
This is something I've been striving to get a better handle on every time I brew. I'm getting more and more familiar with my kettle (8 gal Megapot) and have found that if I collect 6 gallons and 1 quart from the lauter tun and maintain a "vigorous boil" for 60 min, I'll have roughly 5 gallon 1 qt after cooling and will end up with 5 gallons in the fermentor(s).

This is a wide pot, and I think I'm loosing a lot to evaporation during the boil, but if I turn the heat down any more my boil will be less than "vigorous."
 
I design 95% of my recipes myself, so I aim for whatever I want to end up with post-fermentation. That amount varries depending on the size fermenter I have available usually. I brew from 1 to 6 gallons and anywhere in between. When I start kegging I'll likely design recipes so I end up with 5+ gallons of finished product.
 
I aim for 5 gal in the keg, which requires about 6 gal post boil on my system for an IPA, less hoppy beers a bit less.
 
I design my recipes for 7 gallons. I put 7 gallons in the fermenter
 
I usually target the amount that ends up in the keg after fermentation. So, for IPAs with lots of dry hops, I will usually design the recipe for 5.5-6 gallons into the fermenter. For other stuff that's going to ferment for a week and then go straight to the keg, (e.g. a mild) I will usually have 5.25 gallons into the fermenter, and leave about a quart behind as trub.
 
So to sum it up, after brewing a 5 gallon recipe you should have 5 gallons post boil. If you want to have 5 gallons post fermentation for let's say .5 gal of trub loss; the proper way to do it would be to adjust the grain bill by an additional 10%, giving you 5.5 gallons post boil?
 
So to sum it up, after brewing a 5 gallon recipe you should have 5 gallons post boil. If you want to have 5 gallons post fermentation for let's say .5 gal of trub loss; the proper way to do it would be to adjust the grain bill by an additional 10%, giving you 5.5 gallons post boil?

Exactly! I design my grain bill around the amount I want post fermentation.

In some cases if you get really good efficiency you can squeeze 5.5 gallons out of the typical 5 gallon recipe and still hit your numbers. It really depends on the efficiency that the recipe was written at and your measured efficiency on your system.
 
go for 7 - 7.5 gal pre-boil to try and hit 6.5 after boil to get 5.5 in my fermenter. a lot depend on how much hops i have in there
 
I found that the best way to interpret a recipe is to convert the grain bill to percentages. Then I use the recipes OG to adjust the total weight to fit my system and the volume to boil that I’ll need. Same thing with hops. Tweak the amounts in Beersmith to hit the bitterness levels that the recipe calls for.
 
Back
Top