Coming up short on volume - help (3 gallons)

I've got 3 gallon fermenters and 3 gallon kegs, and am coming up way short in my first two all-grains. Like maybe 1 3/4 gallons of finished beer.

I'd love some tips on how much I could reasonably brew to try and get closer to 3 gallons of finished beer. I've been basically taking 5 gallon recipes and cutting them in half hoping for 2.5 gallons. I'm getting like 2-ish gallons into the fermenter and after leaving the yeast behind it's under 2 gallons into the keg.

Should I try doing a 3.5 gallon recipe from the 5-gallon recipes I'm using (multiply by .7 instead of .5) ?? I know my efficiency stinks because I'm so new at all-grain.

 

Hey Wanton, to compensate for trub and other losses in the process you could try to up the recipe but then you would be pushing your fermentor to bubble over.

So as far as recipes go. Total amount of each grain and I divide by 5(for 5 gallon batch), to get grain per gallon, then multiply by how many gallons I want, your case 3.

One thing is to figure out the boil off for your kettle and increase your pre boil volume to compensate.

Efficiency isn't everything so no worries. Once you figure out what you get consistently then you can adjust your grain bill accordingly.

Good luck, hope this was helpful
-Imp

 

Many people make 5.5 gallon batches to get 5 gallons in the keg after losses to trub during fermentation. So yes, you could attempt to make a 3 gallon batch, expect to lose .5 to trub and get closer to 2.5 in the keg.

Multiplying by .6 would give you the correct numbers for a 3 gallon batch, at the original efficiency. If you need to adjust for efficiency, there are many online calculators that will scale a recipe for you.

Let's look at a recipe that calls for 10 lbs of pale malt and 1 lb of crystal 80 with 70% efficiency. If you are expecting 75% efficiency you'd multiply each of the malts by .70/.75 = .933. So you'd use 10*.933= 9.33 lbs of pale malt and 1*.933=.93 lbs of crystal 80.

Many people don't bother with adjusting anything but the base malts, but if you want to keep everything exactly scaled, you can do everything.

 

If you're using 3 gallon fermenters, I wouldn't put more than 2.25-2.5 gallons in to begin with.

If my goal were getting 3 gallons into a keg, I'd probably shoot for a 3.5 gallon recipe fermented in a 5 gallon carboy.

 

How much beer do you want in a keg - if it's a 3 gal one like mine do you want 3 gallons of beer in it, or do you want a little bit less?

It looks like I should want about 20% extra in the primary for headspace - so that's about a half gallon. I'll do a test fill with water and see how large it actually is. Maybe 3 gallon carboys actually are 3.5 and can handle ~ 3 gallons of beer in them. I'll find out tonight.

 

I've had the same problem with trying for 3 gallon batches. If you want 3 gallons in the keg, go for 4 gallon batches. Get a 5 gallon bucket for fermenting. Use your 3 gallon fermenter for secondary if you need to. If I aim for 4 gallons in the bucket, I'll target a finished boil of 4.75 to 5 gallons. I usually toss out 1/2 to 1 gallon trub from the brew kettle, depending how much hops I've put in and if I use a hop bag or not. If you keg right from the bucket, you might have 1/2 or 3/4 gallon above the yeast.
I put that in a glass jug and refrigerate, once it settles, I'll blend with some other leftovers and bottle it or just mix it with some other carbonated beer I have and drink it.
Cheers!

 

After carefully adding water to the 3 gallon carboy, I can tell you they're very accurate. To the tippy top it hold 3 gallons plus one cup!

So assuming you want 20% headspace, that means 2.5 gallons of beer in it. Losing 0.5 gallons to trub, that's 2 gallons total finished beer. Which makes sense now that I realize I've been getting just under that and have been feeling like I did something wrong.

So you're all 100% correct - I need to get bigger carboys if I want ~ 3 gallons in the keg.

Thanks for the info.

 

Boil off depends on the surface area of the brew kettle and the vigor of the boil. Given the same vigor in the same kettle, if a 5 gallon batch boils off 1 gallon per hour a 3 gallon batch boils off.....wait for it...... 1 gallon per hour. Remember, once you acheive 212F the wort gets no hotter, it just pushes more steam (higher boiloff) out of the beer. I'd suggest you judge your batch by the OG rather than by the volume. Did you hit your target gravity? If it's too high, you can adjust by top off in the fermenter. If kits too low, you can stir in some DME just before cooling. Aim for consistency. If you consistently loose 2 gallons in the boil, you can compensate.

 

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