My first brew seemed to go pretty well, and its bottled now. I boiled 3 gallons of water, poured into a glass carboy without filtering anyting, and then added water to fill the carboy to 5 gallons. (I marked every gallon on the side of the carboy with a sharpie). I went from the carboy to a bottling bucket (some loss but didn't seem like much), and then to bottles. I ended up with 19 x 220z bottles and 6 x 12 oz bottles. This comes out to about 490 oz (3.8 gallons). I knew that i probably wouldnt end up with 5 full gallons, but this seems lower than I thought. My FG was also a little higher than i thought, maybe for the same reason.
Any thoughts on what I should be doing to get closer to a final 5 gallons of beer?
Any thoughts on what I should be doing to get closer to a final 5 gallons of beer?