5 Gallon Recipe ended up with a lot less beer?

[Deaux]

So i bottled my very first batch an IPA last night and I ended up with alot less final product than I anticipated.

We started with a 5 gallon recipe and after fermentation stopped in the primary we moved into secondary and dry hopped. After another week we mixed the priming sugar with beer in the bottling bucket and ended up with around 3.5 gallons of beer. After bottling we ended up with about 30 12 oz beers, which was alot less than the ~50 we were expecting. Granted we spilled some and left some in each container after siphoning since this was our first attempt but wouldn't think loss would be that big.

Is this normal? Should we have added water when we moved to secondary fermenter? Just find it a little odd cause recipe came with priming sugar for 5 gallons of beer and we had 30% less than that. Thanks for the help

 

[Arrheinous]

You lose some from the boil kettle transferring to primary, even if you put everything into the primary and leave nothing behind the break material is going to take up some of that volume. Some will be lost in a transfer to secondary because you're leaving behind that break volume and a little bit of wiggle room. A bit more might fall out in secondary which you'll have to siphon around too. This might be a little or a lot; it's brought me down to about 46 bottles before on a brown ale and 40 on a pumpkin ale. Haven't lost more than one gallon though.

If you had a blowoff tube on there then you might lose some volume from the foaming. I might lose like a 1 - 3 bottles worth depending on OG and yeast. Fermcap-S can help control that. But if you didn't mention that then this probably wasn't the issue.

Hops in the boil and dryhopping will soak up some of your liquid and reduce the volume you get. How many ounces of hops were you using in those stages? I did a brief search and some say an ounce of dried hops might absorb quite a bit of water (somewhere from 4 - 10 times their weight) - and it depends on pellets, whole flowers, etc.

Another thing is if your fermentation bucket/carboy has the gallon markings way off and you topped off to the wrong amount.

 

[stpug]

Yes, it's normal. You'll want to build larger recipes based on the beer you're brewing; or accept the smaller batch size. It's fairly typical to lose about 1/4 gallon in primary (trub, yeast, break material, etc). Dry-hopping is also a big loss contributer, especially whole hops. You can lose 1/2+ gallons in dryhopping (i.e. the beer you can't/don't get out from the hops). Right there, if you started with exactly 5 gallons, you'd be left with 4.25. It's hard to say where your other 0.75 gallons went to (probably additional losses in primary and secondary), and if you weren't exactly at 5 gallons then some loss to start. Regardless, making beer is a game of managing your losses or accepting them. I've simply started adjusting my batch size based on the beer I'm brewing. If I know I'll lose extra this batch then I make a slightly larger batch..

No, don't add water after you've pitched the yeast (as a general rule). You don't want to create watered-down beer.

Hopefully you scaled back your priming sugar usage to ~3 gallons? If not then there might be a concern of overcarbonation, or (worse) bottle bombs.

 

[SledgeH]

As you make more beer your racking skill will get better. This will allow you to get as much beer off the yeast cake without disturbing it. Any time you move your beer from the primary to a secondary or tertiary you're going to losw more. That being said, I usually make 5.5 gallon batches now so that I always get 2 cases of beer out of the deal.

 

[dlprice45]

Question: if you make a 5.5 gallon batch with ingredients for a 5 gallon batch, does that not mess up your OG? Or is it not enough of a difference to be a problem?

 

[Arrheinous]

That's around a 10% difference, it'll lower your OG, IBU, and ABV. The wort/beer lost in the transfers or absorption isn't going to release its alcohol or bitterness into the remaining portion. Anything lost is as good as anything you end up with so it sucks.

It might not be a huge deal depending if you want to make a more sessionable beer that way.

 

[zeg]

Question: if you make a 5.5 gallon batch with ingredients for a 5 gallon batch, does that not mess up your OG? Or is it not enough of a difference to be a problem?

You have to account for that. It's a 10% difference, which can be very significant.

How to do that depends on where in the process your losses occur. For example, boil-off loss will reduce the volume of wort, but not the quantity of sugars, so that will increase your gravity. In that case, you can just add back water to make up the difference. Losses from leaving wort or beer behind cannot be made up for by adding water, because these mean you're losing both water and sugar (or alcohol).

When I've done 5 gallon batches in a 5 gallon fermentor, I generally get around 42-44 bottles. With care and a larger primary, I can get closer to the theoretical 53 bottles, but I'm happy with anything over 50. I'm still working on predicting my trub losses, but I'd say I generally aim to make 5.5-5.7 gallons in order to get 5 gallons of beer at the end. (I usually have a lot of trub; I dump the entire contents of my kettle into the fermentor, I have not had luck separating the wort from the dregs.)

 

[dlprice45]

A lot of people on this forum say they top up the water in their fermenter to 5.25 or 5.5 to compensate for trub loss. Are they compensating by adding extra LME/DME, or just watering down their beer?

 

[stpug]

A lot of people on this forum say they top up the water in their fermenter to 5.25 or 5.5 to compensate for trub loss. Are they compensating by adding extra LME/DME, or just watering down their beer?

When I did extract batches I would typically only do partial boils (maybe 3 gallons) and top-off to my desired batch volume. The recipes were usually designed around 5 gallon batches and I would always top-off to 5.25. I always wanted to get those 50+ bottles from a batch. I can't say that increase by 1/4 gallon made a huge difference, nor could I say that it didn't. The beer always came out great and I always got 50+ bottles. In this example, I would simply be watering down beer by 1/4 gallon. This basically equates to adding 0.64 ounces of water to "correct" 12 oz beer. In the end it might make a perceptible difference but it will be subtle. On the other hand, there is nothing wrong with only bottling 45 bottles instead of 48.

Since moving to all grain, I design my recipes around a batch volume of 5.25 for most beers (5.5 gallons for IPAs being dryhopped in a fermenter due to excess loss). I don't topoff at all anymore (at least I haven't found a need yet). My expectation is to get a final volume of 5 gallons, no more, because it will eventually need to all fit into a keg. If I come in under volume, then I'm under volume and no worries. If I'm over volume then I know I'll be drinking some mostly-flat, yeasty beer on kegging day .

 

[Jayhem]

IPA's will kill your final beer volume! Especially dry hopped! I made 10.5 gallons of my black IPA and ended up with about 8 gallons into bottles. It's all part of the cost of hoppy big beer!

 

[zeg]

A lot of people on this forum say they top up the water in their fermenter to 5.25 or 5.5 to compensate for trub loss. Are they compensating by adding extra LME/DME, or just watering down their beer?

See my post right above yours! The answer, rephrased, is that yes, your recipe has to reflect the total volume that is in the fermentor at the start of fermentation (assuming it's a standard recipe that doesn't involve adding liquid later).

The only exception to this would be if you are somehow losing only water. Other than in the boil, this doesn't come up.

IPA's will kill your final beer volume! Especially dry hopped! I made 10.5 gallons of my black IPA and ended up with about 8 gallons into bottles. It's all part of the cost of hoppy big beer!

You can't count your bottles before they're capped!

 

[unionrdr]

I strain my wort& top off water into the fernenter.Less trub that way. The beer gets 3 weeks in primary on average. I let it hit FG,then 3-7 days more to clean up & settle out clear or slightly misty. This leaves a more compact yeast/trub cake on the bottom of primary. I also dry hop in primary at this point. Usually 7 days. I got 51 12oz bottles on my last batch doing this. Sounds like you had a lot of trub,or didn't siphon off as much beera possible both times.