Losing volume during racking/bottling

[olotti]

Today bottled my second AG batch and lost what I consider a lot of volume but I don't know to where was wondering if anyone had any thoughts. Here's some stats.

Post boil batch vol = just under 5 Gal. Boiled off to much as I was looking for 5.25 Gal but I hit the OG #.

Post fermentation volume and pre cold crash was 4.5 Gal. This was day 12. Dry hopped with 2oz just dumped into primary when FG #'s were hit. Bucket pulled this morning 1hr pre bottling and volume read 4.5 Gal. I was thinking I wanted to bottle 5 Gal so I primed with 5oz of corn sugar in 1/2 Gal of H2O to bring my volume up to 5 Gal. So I dump the primed H2o into the bucket and rack the beer onto it. Racked with an auto siphon with a mesh bag over the tip to prevent hop gunk clogging the system, still got stuck but had minimal hops on the bag itself. Anyway had to leave some wort in the fermentor because I just couldn't get it all with the siphon. In the end I somehow ended up with only 4 Gal total to bottle, that's including the .5Gal of priming solution. How does this happen? I lost about 1 Gal of good beer somewhere in the process, I was a little irritated as I cannot think of where this Gallon went. Any thoughts and now I'm worried the beer will be way over carbed as I primed for 5 Gal not 4, it's and APA style.

 

[andrewsbromley]

So you likely lost volume in a number of places. If you wanted to start with 5.25G and only got 5G and still hit your OG, that's a sign that your efficiency wasn't as good as you planned. Not a big problem, but if you reduce the vigor of your boil (or change the length of your boil or change to a vessel with less surface area), you should reduce that loss. If you wind up with a lower OG than you wanted, just bump it up with some DME during the boil.

Next I'm a little confused - you said you had just under 5G when it went into the fermenter but only 4.5G at bottling time. Some evaporation is normal, but that's a huge amount in only 12 days. My only thought there would be if your airlock wasn't secure and you were fermenting hot, but even that's a stretch. If, however, the 5G measurement was in the kettle, it's likely that you lost some volume when transferring to your fermenter with hop and protein debris.

You'll naturally lose some volume in primary to trub. Cold crashing will certainly help drop that out; the other thing would be to make sure you don't jostle it around too much. Maybe if you moved it around too much between cold crashing and bottling, you could have diluted the trub with more of the beer (adding to your losses at this stage). Whenever I do really hoppy beers (either lots of hops in the kettle or dry hops), I always plan to lose at least 1/2 a gallon to the hops; I think that's just the way it is. When dry hopping, you might consider using a hop bag to better contain the material; it'll decrease the exposure of beer to the hops to some degree, but you should lose less beer during racking.

With the final 4G, was that 4G in the bottling bucket or 4G worth of beer bottled? You'll usually wind up with some liquid left in your bucket, but maybe only 10 fl oz or so in my experience.

If you're worried about over carbonating in the future, it might be best to transfer the beer to the bottling bucket first, then figure out the volume you're working with. It would mean stirring the sugar into the beer instead of just letting it mix as the beer is racked onto the sugar, but it would prevent the problem you mention.

I also worry about just adding 1/2 gallon of priming solution to the beer. In your case, that would be a 10% dilution of your beer; seems like that would really impact the body of your beer if not also the flavor. If you notice you're low on volume that late in the game, I would just deal with it instead of risk diluting the beer. Just my 2 cents.

In the end, if you really want to quantify things better, you can actually measure the amount left in your kettle and primary fermenter to compare it with your other numbers. Losses to evaporation, in tubing/strainers/other equipment are harder to quantify, but it'll get you more information to work with.

 

[olotti]

So you likely lost volume in a number of places. If you wanted to start with 5.25G and only got 5G and still hit your OG, that's a sign that your efficiency wasn't as good as you planned. Not a big problem, but if you reduce the vigor of your boil (or change the length of your boil or change to a vessel with less surface area), you should reduce that loss. If you wind up with a lower OG than you wanted, just bump it up with some DME during the boil.

Next I'm a little confused - you said you had just under 5G when it went into the fermenter but only 4.5G at bottling time. Some evaporation is normal, but that's a huge amount in only 12 days. My only thought there would be if your airlock wasn't secure and you were fermenting hot, but even that's a stretch. If, however, the 5G measurement was in the kettle, it's likely that you lost some volume when transferring to your fermenter with hop and protein debris.

You'll naturally lose some volume in primary to trub. Cold crashing will certainly help drop that out; the other thing would be to make sure you don't jostle it around too much. Maybe if you moved it around too much between cold crashing and bottling, you could have diluted the trub with more of the beer (adding to your losses at this stage). Whenever I do really hoppy beers (either lots of hops in the kettle or dry hops), I always plan to lose at least 1/2 a gallon to the hops; I think that's just the way it is. When dry hopping, you might consider using a hop bag to better contain the material; it'll decrease the exposure of beer to the hops to some degree, but you should lose less beer during racking.

With the final 4G, was that 4G in the bottling bucket or 4G worth of beer bottled? You'll usually wind up with some liquid left in your bucket, but maybe only 10 fl oz or so in my experience.

If you're worried about over carbonating in the future, it might be best to transfer the beer to the bottling bucket first, then figure out the volume you're working with. It would mean stirring the sugar into the beer instead of just letting it mix as the beer is racked onto the sugar, but it would prevent the problem you mention.

I also worry about just adding 1/2 gallon of priming solution to the beer. In your case, that would be a 10% dilution of your beer; seems like that would really impact the body of your beer if not also the flavor. If you notice you're low on volume that late in the game, I would just deal with it instead of risk diluting the beer. Just my 2 cents.

In the end, if you really want to quantify things better, you can actually measure the amount left in your kettle and primary fermenter to compare it with your other numbers. Losses to evaporation, in tubing/strainers/other equipment are harder to quantify, but it'll get you more information to work with.

Thanks for the thorough answer. I'm working on the boil aspect, bumped up my last batch to a 7 Gal boil and came closer to my final 5.5 Gal end volume, still working on it though.

I'm guessing I wrote down the final volume before I transferred and did end up leaving some in the pot so where you're confused on the 4.5 Gal volume was prob the actual wort transferred.

The 4 Gal was the amount in the bottling bucket, I ended up leaving about 24oz in the bucket due to transfer of hop material into the bottling bucket. Net yield was 38 12oz bottles and one sample glass.

I always read to rack on top of the priming solution I'm guessing this is so the beer mixes with the sugar and there's no need to stir. However next batch I'm def going to rack first then check my volume then add the priming solution as I'm using a carboy and not real sure of where the final volume is going to end up. It was also suggested by some people here that if my volume was low to add water in the end, I get that it may dilute it a little and didn't want to do it. Guess we'll see what happens in 3 weeks when its carbed up.