19 liters in the fermentor or in the bottles?

[drunkinThailand]

When a recipe says 19 liters, does that mean in the fermenter or bottles?

the reason I ask is that lately i've been scaling up my recipes to 21 liters to hopefully get 19 or 20 in the bottles and my beers have been darker than planned, wondering if this is why...

 

[unionrdr]

That's referring to the total recipe volume in the fermenter. 19L is a hair over 5 USG's, like 5.016 USG's. Your beers are darkening from maillard reactions in the brew kettle. Use about 1pound extract per gallon of water in the boil for partial boils. The rest can safely be added immediately @ flame out. Since pasteurization happens in seconds @ 160F, & the wort's still boiling hot, Bob's your uncle. This will lighten color & help improve flavor as well by lessening the amount of extract available to said maillard reactions.
And using plain DME in the boil will also lessen this reaction rather than using LME, which darkens more readily. I add LME's at flame out for this reason.