number of 12oz bottles per 5 gallon batch???

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slayerextreme

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was trying to get a better idea about why I keep coming up short on beer...

I'm on my 3rd batch, and I have stuck with extract brewing up to this point...I start with 2.5 gallon, complete my brew and then top off to get my 5 gallons...

5 gallon = 640oz

48 x 12oz = 576oz...leaving 64 extra ounces, I loose some when I pull a OG sample before I pitch my yeast maybe 8-10oz....then I dont touch it unless its time to transfer to the secondary..

I have dry hopped with one of the 1st 2 brews I have bottled and I also dry hopped the 3rd brew I have yet to bottle

Both of my first 2 brews have come up 5 to 8 bottles short of the full 48 bottles that I shoot for.....

where does the beer go??? where am I loosing that much beer...I know the trub and dry hop pellets soak up some of the beer but dang.....

Again, I know that I start with a full 5 gallons before I pitch the yeast...

just wanted some opinions
 
That does seem like a lot of loss unless you have a huge layer of trub and/or your siphon isn't getting all the beer out of the fermenter at bottling time. What are you using to measure water when you brew? Are you really getting 5 gal into the fermenter when you brew?

I invested in one of these, so no more guessing with liquid volumes.
41JpzAUjneL._SX342_.jpg
 
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I would calibrate your fermenting bucket. The lines they have on them arent always accurate.

I just read today about that accuracy so will check mine tomorrow.

My first batch I messed up and thought i added too much water and got 50 bottles the next few 48 then one 46 which bothered me. Yesterdays bottling gave me 48.
 
How much do you end up with in the bottling bucket? You might start with 5 gallons, but like you said you'll lose some along the way depending on what you're doing/ingredients. Most of the time I end up with two cases and about a 6 pack extra for a 5 gallon batch.
 
I just bottled 4 gallons on Saturday (had issues with boil-off), and came up at 42 bottles. So it is possible to get 10+ bottles per gallon.
 
danthebugman said:
Most of the time I end up with two cases and about a 6 pack extra for a 5 gallon batch.
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Your batches are bigger than 5 gallons if you're getting 54 bottles. You may want to calibrate your bucket if you're using that to measure.
 
Not necessarily. Mine are pretty accurate from my measurements & I get 52-56-12oz bottles from 5 gallons. But the devil, as they say, is in the details. I top off to 5 gallon mark, after having first strained the chilled wort into the fermenter. This gets out extraneous gunk & aerates as well. I wind up with about 3/8" of compacted trub on the bottom of primary by bottling day. With spigots on all my fermenters, I rack out the beer until yeast& trub just barely start showing in the spigot end of the racking tube. Stop racking at that point! I wind up with a little bit of gritty stuff on the bottom of my bottling bucket. I have the spigot on that one set up to get all but the last couple TBSP's of beer out. This is how you get more than 48-12oz bottles from 5 gallons in my experience. :mug:
 
I guess it depends on how you define a 5 gal batch. If it's 5 gal going into your fermenter then it's a safe bet you'll come up short at bottling time. I always shoot for 5 1/2 gal into the fermenter to account for losses and I calculate my brews based on that rather than 5 gallons.
 
I just top off to 5 gallons, but strain the wort so there's less trub, cold break & yeast at the end of primary. And my efficiency is high enough to where at 5 gallons, it's still high on the OG.
 
On my last brew day, I calibrated a lot of my gear. I found that my brewer's best brewing bucket and it came out over a quart high... meaning it was ~5% off. Similar variation in your gear could account for the losses you've noticed.

And as some other folks have mentioned, trub will take up a good bit of space. It also can vary a lot batch to batch, which may explain why your yield varies between the mid 40's and the low 50's.
 
I also strain my wort from the BK into my fermenter, and my trub losses are minimal. When bottling time comes, my fermenter has been cold crashed for a few days already, and the yeast cake is quite compact, making all but the last 1/2 cup or so bottle-able.
From start to finish, I lose less than 1 cup in total.
 
Not meaning to be too obvious, but are you sure you're putting exactly 12 oz. into the bottles? If you put slightly more into each bottle you'll wind up with fewer bottles. Though I really suspect most of it is in trub/racking losses.
 
unionrdr said:
Not necessarily. Mine are pretty accurate from my measurements & I get 52-56-12oz bottles from 5 gallons.
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You can't. That would require more than 5 gallons of liquid. The math just doesn't work.

5 gallons X 128 oz/gal ÷ 12 oz/bottle = 53.3 bottles. Any more than that requires either more than 5 gallons of liquid or less than 12 ounces per bottle.

(I have some bottles that are 11.2 oz each, so if I used only those, I would get 57 bottles per 5 gallons, but I think I only have 12 of those total.)
 
CJ1 said:
You can't. That would require more than 5 gallons of liquid. The math just doesn't work.

5 gallons X 128 oz/gal ÷ 12 oz/bottle = 53.3 bottles. Any more than that requires either more than 5 gallons of liquid or less than 12 ounces per bottle.

(I have some bottles that are 11.2 oz each, so if I used only those, I would get 57 bottles per 5 gallons, but I think I only have 12 of those total.)
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That's how many I get, although I do use some German bottles mixed in with US ones. Usually 52 or a bit more. So I do get that many, depending on how many German bottles I wind up using. But rarely only 48.
myndflyte said:
Is everyone talking in US gallons or is someone using Imperial gallons?
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US gallons here. Although my buckets have USG & Imperial markings.
 
I also use the brewers best fermenting bucket...and I will "calibrate" it on my next brew...as I said, I extract brew with specialty grains...I use grain bags and hop socks during the brew to eliminate a lot of floating debris and make it where i dont really need to filter.....I stary with the recommended 2.5 gallons and brew for an hour, then I top off to the 5 gallon mark on the bucket.....when I transfer to the secondary , I always tilt the bucket to get all the beer off the trub, and I also do the same when transferring to the bottling bucket....so either my bucket isnt calibrated when I fill to the 5 gallon mark or the trub and added hops may be holding more beer that I expected...I always expected to get around 53 12oz bottles, but I havent hit that mark yet

JR_Brewer said:
On my last brew day, I calibrated a lot of my gear. I found that my brewer's best brewing bucket and it came out over a quart high... meaning it was ~5% off. Similar variation in your gear could account for the losses you've noticed.

And as some other folks have mentioned, trub will take up a good bit of space. It also can vary a lot batch to batch, which may explain why your yield varies between the mid 40's and the low 50's.
Click to expand...
 
That's why I also pour the chilled wort through a fine mesh strainer into primary. Less compacted trub & yeast at the bottom of primary gives more clear beer to rack off to the bottling bucket. Plus I did save some German bottles that are 11.2ozs, like Paulaner, Franziskaner & Werenesgruner. These two things helped me get more than the typical 48-12oz bottles.
 
unionrdr said:
Not necessarily. Mine are pretty accurate from my measurements & I get 52-56-12oz bottles from 5 gallons. But the devil, as they say, is in the details. I top off to 5 gallon mark, after having first strained the chilled wort into the fermenter. This gets out extraneous gunk & aerates as well. I wind up with about 3/8" of compacted trub on the bottom of primary by bottling day. With spigots on all my fermenters, I rack out the beer until yeast& trub just barely start showing in the spigot end of the racking tube. Stop racking at that point! I wind up with a little bit of gritty stuff on the bottom of my bottling bucket. I have the spigot on that one set up to get all but the last couple TBSP's of beer out. This is how you get more than 48-12oz bottles from 5 gallons in my experience. :mug:
Click to expand...
It's impossible to get 54 or more 12oz beers out of 5 gallons.

640oz (5 gal) divided by 12oz is 53.3, the max possible
 
I have not read thru all the posts, but will say that, in my case, I have had about 5.5 gallons give or take into the fermenter. Using the bottle wand thing that I got with NB starter and leaving the correct amount of head space, I have come up between 42 and 46 bottles depending. I see at least 1/2 inch of trub and yeast at the bottom of the bucket, and I tend to stop when I notice the crud coming thru the hose. With that said, I do my dry hops in a bag and don't see much in the crud at the bottom. So, for me, 42 to 46 usually is where I am at the end of it all.
 
I bottle in 12oz long necks and my batches end up anywhere from 5 to 5.5 gal. Depends if I hit my volume on brew day, amount of trub, etc. From 5 gallons I don't get to 52. I top up to about 1/2" headspace to limit O2 ingress, so there's probably a bit more than 12 oz in each. I get maybe 50-51 per 5 gal batch.

On bottling day I just make sure I have some extra bottles cleaned and sanitized. It's hard for me to accurately determine how much I'll rack from the fermenter until I do.
 
I bottle directly out of the fermenter and get between 48 and 52 bottles based on 5 to 5.5 gallons of wort. We generally let a little run clear from the racking tube before the first bottle and stop the last bottle before sucking up trub. In between bottles we might sample a bit of the uncarbonated beer. Overall I'm somewhere around 85% packaging efficiency.
 
xuledywo said:
- How much beer do experienced brewers get out of a "5 gallon" batch?
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Many sources consider "a batch" as what's left in the kettle after the boil, or what goes into the fermenter.

The way I see it, "the batch" is the finished packaged product.
 
Same here. Only what's drinkable--what ends up in bottles or kegs--is "batch" to me. The net yield.

But I know the convention is based on how much is racked to the FV, and a lot of the brew software apps go by that.
 
xuledywo said:
I bottled my first batch yesterday. It was a kit for Nut Brown Ale from Hoggetowne Ale Works, a homebrew shop in Gainesville, FL. I think it is coming out nicely - smells good, tastes good, looks good. However, I was disappointed that I only managed to bottle 4 gallons of beer. I new it would yield less than 5 gallons but I didn't expect to loose an entire gallon. (The batch was topped up to a full 5 gallons in the initial fermentor before pitching the yeast.) I believe the major culprit was how much I left behind in the primary and secondary fermentors when I racked to the next container. So here are my questions:

- How much beer do experienced brewers get out of a "5 gallon" batch?

- How do you maximize the transfer of beer and minimize the transfer of trub when racking?
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Given the time and effort involved in a batch of beer, I target 2 full 5 gallon kegs packaged per batch, so I make extra and aim for 12 gallons to the fermenter.
My neighbor and I often drink any good excess beer on kegging night (beer is mostly carbed from spunding, chilled from cold crashing, and pulled from the fermenter with a floating dip tube... if it is tasty we'll hook up a Pluto gun and drink the leftovers until they get yeasty. )
 
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I stick with the "5 gal batch" is 5 gal into the fermenter since that's the typical convention. I think it just creates less chance for misunderstanding especially for newer brewers.
 
whoaru99 said:
I stick with the "5 gal batch" is 5 gal into the fermenter since that's the typical convention. I think it just creates less chance for misunderstanding especially for newer brewers.
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But, it's not beer at that point, is it? It's a batch of wort.
 
xuledywo said:
primary and secondary fermentors
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Since you used a secondary, you probably lost additional beer there. Many (most?) of us just leave the beer in the primary until time to bottle. Instructions of lots of kits tell you to secondary but unless you're bulk aging, adding fruit, etc. it's not really necessary.🍻
 
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whoaru99 said:
Frankly, it doesn't really matter to the point.

A "5 gal batch" under normal/typical convention is 5 gal into the fermenter. Call it beer, call it wort, call it what you will.
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Sounds more like one opinion. As I said, I've seen sources call a batch what's left in the kettle a batch. It may be a common opinion, but I don't think there's any definitive source that says "normal/typical convention" is what goes into the fermenter is a batch.
 
Brewer Mike said:
Sounds more like one opinion. As I said, I've seen sources call a batch what's left in the kettle a batch. It may be a common opinion, but I don't think there's any definitive source that says "normal/typical convention" is what goes into the fermenter is a batch.
Click to expand...

The "definitive source" is heaps of recipes for "5 gal" whos OG aligns with the ingredients bill and 5 gal into the fermenter.
 

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