Overall Brew loss from Pitching of Yeast to Bottling

[GreenMtnBrewer]

Hey there everyone,

I will give the short version of this problem and then if those of you who can help me out, or have ran into the same deal that need more info, just let me know.

Helping a buddy brew a batch for his college reunion. I have been brewing extract for years. I just moved to all grain, and now have 6 batches under my belt.

I am still learning/trying to understanding the boil volumes and hitting targets that are wanted, but either way we did a standard american pale, with a dry hop in the secondary for 1 week.

At time of pitching yeast we had 5 gallons in the bucket, on the nose!

At racking to secondary (6 gallon Better Bottle), of course there was some minor liquid loss, as with any batch as I dont want to get too much of the trub and crap into the secondary, I would say maybe an inch at most from the top of trub I leave.

At racking to secondary, the dry hop additions were as follows:
1 full oz pellet
3/4 oz whole leaf

At racking to bottle, of course the whole leaf soaked up some brew (as well as the pellet? I am not too sure if this was even something that i need to worry about with the pellet?)

So the BIG issue is, when all was said and done, I had just shy of 4 gallons that went into the bottling bucket??????????????? Now, the shock to my buddy and I was like loosing another 1/2 case of bottled goodness.

I felt bad about it and am not too sure how the hell I lost that much on us? I am not too sure if it was technique or if that is the general deal with the process I described above? variables?

I usually keg, and have not bottled in over 5 years, so this is a stumper for me.

Any ideas, suggestions? Thanks much in advance.

Erik

 

[BrocksHomebrew]

Every inch of volume in a 6 gallon better bottle is about 1/3 gallon. Racking a couple of times could have easily accounted for your loss.

I usually do 5.5 gallons into primary and without a secondary step will get a full keg.

 

[Clanchief]

I rarely if ever secondary, but if I do plan on doing so, I always make so to plan for the loss in advance. Go to 5.25-5.5 in primary before you rack over the first time. If I'm dry hopping, I don't bother racking, I just add that into the primary and let it sit there. I only rack if I'm adding something extremely new - fruit or whiskey or the like - to the beer. As it is, I usually go closer to 5.2 gallons in primary no matter what, just to ensure that I can get as much out of my brew day as possible.

 

[GreenMtnBrewer]

Brocks, thanks much for that info!

 

[GreenMtnBrewer]

Chief, thanks much as well!

 

[strambo]

For my DIPA with 5 oz of leaf (dry) hops, I put 5.5 gals into the primary (bucket) and dry hopped in the bucket. After hop absorbtion and trub loss, I got about 5 gals exactly into the keg. A rack to secondary would have eaten into the number by another 1/4 gal or so.

For my normal beers I shoot for 5.25 or so into primary as others do above.