Calculating Volume of Beer

Hello all-

Today I bottled my Triforce Stout- a Double Chocolate Stout from Austin Homebrew. I added raspberries, extra chocolate, and vanilla in the carboy (hence triforce) and let it sit for several weeks. I have to say, wow! it tastes good! Very raspberryish (almost no chocolate, I'm surprised) and I expect that to fade out over time and hopefully the chocolate will pop up.

Despite my glee of brewing a delicious beer, I was in quite a difficult situation. I had no idea how much beer I'd be able to get out of my carboy given I had a bag full of 3.75 lbs of raspberries and all the trub at the bottom. I managed to fill 32 12oz bottles and 7 22oz bombers, which means I got probably ~4.2 gallons or so.

This made it hard to calculate how much priming sugar to add but I had already guessimated that I had ~4 gallons so I basically poured in 4/5 of the priming sugar package that came with my kit. I definitely will be praying I didn't add too much (or too little, my previous IPA was seriously undercarbed) sugar lol.

I am wondering if there is a easy way to calculate volume by measuring how much beer is in my bottling bucket. I tried to do this method with my measurements of 12" high with a 6" radius. This gave me ~1357 cubic feet of beer in my bottling bucket. However, when I converted this to gallons, I got 5.8 gallons which is waaaay off.

I would greatly appreciate any help how to calculate how much beer is in a carboy (or bottling bucket).

EDIT: cubic inches, not feet Q.Q

I would honestly be shocked if there aren't volume markings somewhere on the inside or outside of the bucket.

But ice cold water weighs 8.345404 lbs per gallon. If you have a reasonably accurate scale it shouldn't be too hard to work out.

LovesIPA said:

I would honestly be shocked if there aren't volume markings somewhere on the inside or outside of the bucket.

But ice cold water weighs 8.345404 lbs per gallon. If you have a reasonably accurate scale it shouldn't be too hard to work out.

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I was surprised that my bottling bucket and carboy did not have any sorts of marking on it. My primary bucket does, but that's it.

Wouldn't beer weight more than ice water due to all the sugars and yeast in it?

milo_leon said:

I was surprised that my bottling bucket and carboy did not have any sorts of marking on it. My primary bucket does, but that's it.

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That's genuinely strange.

milo_leon said:

Wouldn't beer weight more than ice water due to all the sugars and yeast in it?

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Yes but it's irrelevant. A gallon of beer is the same amount as a gallon of water.

I would suggest you put some markings on your vessels, add a gallon, make a mark and so on.

Also, never assume the markings already on a bucket are correct as there are people including me that have experienced they are not always accurate-it's just printed on and errors in production do happen

If you hold a light to the bottom side of a bucket you can see the trub layer and then see how much beer you actually have before racking.

LovesIPA said:

Yes but it's irrelevant. A gallon of beer is the same amount as a gallon of water.

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But a gallon of beer weighs more than a gallon of water. But as you say it is irrelevant because depending on the FG it would be only 1-2% more but being that much shy on your priming sugar is not going to be noticable anyway

milo_leon said:

I tried to do this method with my measurements of 12" high with a 6" radius. This gave me ~1357 cubic feet of beer in my bottling bucket.

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Redo that math!

milo_leon said:

Hello all-

Today I bottled my Triforce Stout- a Double Chocolate Stout from Austin Homebrew. I added raspberries, extra chocolate, and vanilla in the carboy (hence triforce) and let it sit for several weeks. I have to say, wow! it tastes good! Very raspberryish (almost no chocolate, I'm surprised) and I expect that to fade out over time and hopefully the chocolate will pop up.

Despite my glee of brewing a delicious beer, I was in quite a difficult situation. I had no idea how much beer I'd be able to get out of my carboy given I had a bag full of 3.75 lbs of raspberries and all the trub at the bottom. I managed to fill 32 12oz bottles and 7 22oz bombers, which means I got probably ~4.2 gallons or so.

This made it hard to calculate how much priming sugar to add but I had already guessimated that I had ~4 gallons so I basically poured in 4/5 of the priming sugar package that came with my kit. I definitely will be praying I didn't add too much (or too little, my previous IPA was seriously undercarbed) sugar lol.

I am wondering if there is a easy way to calculate volume by measuring how much beer is in my bottling bucket. I tried to do this method with my measurements of 12" high with a 6" radius. This gave me ~1357 cubic feet of beer in my bottling bucket. However, when I converted this to gallons, I got 5.8 gallons which is waaaay off.

I would greatly appreciate any help how to calculate how much beer is in a carboy (or bottling bucket).

Click to expand...

What? Something went wrong with your calculations. 12" is 1 foot. 6" is 0.5ft. So (pi x r^2 x h) is your volume, and it is (pi/4) cubic feet, not 1357.

freisste said:

Redo that math!

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I think he just messed up the units because he later said "=5.8 gallons"

Yeah I admit I wasn't doing a great job with the calculations. I found an online calculator that would give me the cubic inches and then I just googled cubic inches to gallons. Math was never my strong suit. -bows head in shame-

milo_leon said:

Yeah I admit I wasn't doing a great job with the calculations. I found an online calculator that would give me the cubic inches and then I just googled cubic inches to gallons. Math was never my strong suit. -bows head in shame-

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You didn't mess up the calculations, the only thing you did was make the mistake of putting "feet" instead of "inches" in the OP, your maths worked out correct.

I didn't actually do the math so I don't know what mistake (if any, aside from writing the wrong units) occurred. I just thought it was kind of funny. Didn't mean to make a big deal of it either; I just knew his volume SHOULDN'T be larger than my master bedroom.

OP, sounds like you've gotten yourself on the right track with online calculators. Any other issues, feel free to ask. I'll try not to make fun of simple errors.

10151 gallons of beer! 327.45 bbls!

need help drinking that?

I only brew 5 gallons at a time. Sounds like OP DOES have it right. We should all be so lucky.

freisste said:

I only brew 5 gallons at a time. Sounds like OP DOES have it right. We should all be so lucky.

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hahaha I do brew 5 gals at a time. Ended up with ~4 gals after secondary fermentation. Probably will look into a 6 gal carboy in the future so I can have more delicious beer.

milo_leon said:

hahaha I do brew 5 gals at a time. Ended up with ~4 gals after secondary fermentation. Probably will look into a 6 gal carboy in the future so I can have more delicious beer.

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no, man... up your game to 300 barrels! put the rest of our pipelines to shame!