How to account for the trub and yeast cake?

[joeyjojojr]

You brew 9 litres but get 8.5L as some of the beer has turned to cake and trub.
Does this make the beer stronger then?

Should I brew 9.5L or will I then have a beer that is the strength of 9.5L?

I guess what I am asking is does the cake and trub concentrate the final product.

Should I brew 9.5L of beer as if I am brewing 9L then?

 

[Bellybuster]

You account for that loss in recipe formulation and then there are no worries.

 

[joeyjojojr]

Yes but my question was HOW to account for it

 

[cilestiok]

No it does not make the beer stronger. The amount of trub will be dependent on how much of the solids from the kettle were transferred over to the fermenter, dry hopping, and amount of yeast in fermenter. So for example, a big beer requires more yeast than a small beer so the big beer will have a larger yeast cake. Also, in a heavily dry hopped pale ale, the hops will absorb a lot of water as well as the yeast cake.

 

[mrgrimm101]

Are you really going to notice an increase in "strength" for an extra half liter? I wouldn't think so. I brew 5 gallon batches (about 19L) and I typically try to get an extra 0.5 gallon (1.9L) in the fermentor, that way I might lose only about 0.5 gallons of beer in the end due to the trub/yeast cake. You can increase your ingredients very slightly if you want to try to make it match up with the slightly larger batch. I typically don't alter my recipes..it really doesn't effect the end product much, if at all.

 

[dsaavedra]

When I have a recipe for 5 gallons of beer and I want to end up with 5 gallons of finished, packaged, product, I will scale the recipe up to 5.5 gallons (usually only means increasing all of the grains weights by a few ounces). I brew it with the intention of getting 5.5 gallons into my fermenter (I'm usually pretty close). By the time it is ready to package and the trub/yeast cake has settled, I usually get right about 5 gallons exactly into bottles.

So basically, look at how much volume your typical yeast/trub cake occupies, and scale your batches up by that amount.

 

[m00ps]

IME, the only time you really need to account for the trub loss is when bottling. Ive found you lose about 10-15% which wont go into the bottling bucket or keg. When carbing in bottles, I account for this so I dont overcarb