5 gallon kit question.

[DogFace_Brewing]

This is the first time I did a 5 gallon kit....all my others were 23L. So my final outcome of course looks a disappointing small amount compared to what I am used to seeing

I got 2 extract kits from Midwest and did 4 gallon boils with top off to 5 gallons.

Racked to secondary today (to clear up the beer so I can keg) and I only got 4.25-4.5 gallons since a lot of the trub was on the bottom and I wanted to get as little as possible in the secondary.

Question:

When making 5 gallon kits should I be topping off to 5.5 to compensate the half gallon I will miss do to racking into a secondary and leaving some behind so I don't get any trub in the keg?

For you guys who keg, do you get full corny kegs or are they a little short due to this?

Thanks for your help!

 

[camus]

If the kit is for a 5 gallon batch, you want to end up with 5 gallons. Adding more water will just dilute your beer.

FWIW, all the midwest kits I have done were set for 5 gallon batches.

 

[Yooper]

If you turn a 5 gallon kit into a 5.5 gallon kit, you're actually watering down the beer by 10% or so. If you want to do that, you can but I wouldn't. I'd rather settle with 4.5 gallons of great beer than 5 gallons of slightly-watered down beer.

When you no longer buy kits, but just buy the ingredients, you can scale up your recipe to 5.5 gallon batches if you want to finish with 5 gallons. That's what I generally do.

You don't have to rack to secondary- you can just leave your beer in the primary for three weeks and bottle/keg from there if you want. There isn't anything magical that happens by moving the beer. The beer will clear without racking, and suspended solids will still fall out. In fact, with a bit of time, the yeast cake/trub may compact a bit tighter so that you actually get a smaller trub layer with some time. If you use a highly flocculant yeast like S04 or nottingham, the trub layer is solid, and you can just rack clear beer off of it leaving almost no beer left in the fermenter.

 

[DogFace_Brewing]

If you use a highly flocculant yeast like S04 or nottingham, the trub layer is solid, and you can just rack clear beer off of it leaving almost no beer left in the fermenter.

See this is the problem, I don't get a solid trub layer, could it be because I rack it to early to the secondary? I usually keep it in the primary for 2 weeks and rack it to secondary. When I do the trub layer is still loose (slides right out of bucket easily) guessing that letting it sit in primary 3 weeks to a month will tighten up that layer correct?