“Reasonable” equipment (total) loss

[badmajon]

I finally got around to calculating my equipment + trub loss and I figured out it’s a whopping 1.1 gallons. I have about a quart (~1 liter) loss to trub in the kettle and the rest of it seems to be lost in the counterflow chiller and tubing.

Oh, and the hop absorption... (last batch had 3 ounces pellet hops)

It seems really high but I had 5.8 gallons left in the kettle after boiling and I only had 4.7 gallons in the fermenter!

Does this seem reasonable or should I think of tweaking my setup?

 

[acidrain]

Do you recirculate to chill?
You can get some of your points back by draining through the chiller into the fermenter, then sparging through the chiller until you achieve your pre-boil volume. This will rinse the hi-points wort with low-points wort out of the chiller, plus I find it makes a slightly quicker brew day.

 

[kh54s10]

I don't have a counterflow chiller but if set up differently couldn't you make it so nothing stays inside??

3 grams of hop? That is almost nothing!!

You can account for these losses before you get to the boil. After you know your boil off rate you change the amount of wort you collect so that you end up with what you want in your fermenter.

For example if you wanted 5 gallons in your fermenter you would have needed to start the boil with 6.1 gallons of wort.

My boil off is just about 2 gallons, I want 5.25 in the fermenter so I need 7.25 gallons - preboil.

 

[grampamark]

Does this seem reasonable or should I think of tweaking my setup?

Is it your goal to have the beer you want or the system efficiency you want?

You can re-engineer your system to minimize hardware related losses, or you can compensate by sparging for the kettle volume you need to get the fermenter volume you want.

I'm more interested in the finished product than the process, but that's just me. YMMV.

 

[badmajon]

Is it your goal to have the beer you want or the system efficiency you want?

You can re-engineer your system to minimize hardware related losses, or you can compensate by sparging for the kettle volume you need to get the fermenter volume you want.

I'm more interested in the finished product than the process, but that's just me. YMMV.

I can't believe I didn't think of that. Just dump in some fresh water and pinch off the outflow into the kettle when the water starts coming out. Hah!

 

[CascadesBrewer]

It seems really high but I had 5.8 gallons left in the kettle after boiling and I only had 4.7 gallons in the fermenter!

Note there is a good amount of volume loss due to shrinkage between 210F and 70F. The BeerSmith default value for this is 4% which comes out to 28 oz for a 5.5 gallons. I have not measured it exactly myself, and one web calculator that I tried to use was giving me a bigger volume.

 

[badmajon]

Note there is a good amount of volume loss due to shrinkage between 210F and 70F. The BeerSmith default value for this is 4% which comes out to 28 oz for a 5.5 gallons. I have not measured it exactly myself, and one web calculator that I tried to use was giving me a bigger volume.

Whoa. I didn’t even think of that. I know the oil in my deep fryer swells up when it gets hot so I always have to make sure there is a gap between the oil and fry basket when the oil is cold. I didn’t even think about wort doing that!!! Thanks!