Recipe yield decrease from primary to secondary to bottles

[TripleF]

I'm curious about how to measure and plan out a recipe when it comes to the amount of trub at the bottom of my primary and secondary fermentation vessels, since the amount of total drinkable beer in the end decreases with every transfer.

I typically make 5 or 6 gallon batches. I just got a larger mash tun though for all-grain brewing, which results in a lot more debris in the fermenters. I typically do a boil of the full recipe and only occasionally add water to the primary fermenter to get the volume up to my recipe amount.

My question is how much of the fermentable sugar is lost from the recipe in the trub of primary when I move to secondary? Could I add water to secondary to achieve a more precise recipe volume?

(I note that attempting to measure gravity between primary and secondary fermentation seems like a fools errand since it will never be the same between two batches depending on a host of variables.)

-FFF

 

[WoodlandBrew]

You will loose beer when you rack off the trub which is part alcohol, part sugar, part water, and some other smaller volume components. If you really wanted to you could calculate how much of each. If that is what you are looking for, then may I ask why?

Typical trub loss for me is 10-20%.

If you compensate by adding water it will dilute your beer. (both alcohol and flavor). I have diluted part of a batch with water to make beer for my BMC friends, but otherwise I would not recommended it.

What do you hope to accomplish by measuring gravity when you rack from the primary to the secondary?

 

[TripleF]

The question in my mind is to create some uniformity between batches that seem to vary in total yield (viewed in the number of bottles at the end). If I get more protein, debris, and hops in the trub, those don't seem as though they should affect the total recipe so then a recipe might be more replicable after primary when the debris is gone. The question is how much of the sugar, alcohol and water is lost with the trub. I under stand that adding water would dilute it but the question would be whether I could plan my recipe to account for that and have a more precise measurement. And this is just something I'm curious about as far as exploring variables from recipe to recipe.

 

[WoodlandBrew]

That's a good idea, and it is really quite simple. You loose a little bit of everything to trub, and the distribution is pretty equal. So all you need to do is scale up your recipe. This is one of the reasons you see a lot of 5.25 gallon recipes. It's to make up for trub loss and still fill the two cases of bottles, or a 5 gallon keg. Once you know your process you will know what to expect for trub loss. Going by memory here, but mine is something like 10% for a normal all grain and 20% for fruit beers.

 

[Odin_Brews]

Ive always assumed a uniform distribution, loss is lost and thereby less beer. I suspect if you measure gravity between primary and secondary they will be exactly the same. Anything lost to the trub is likely negligible (other than the amount of bottles in the end)

 

[Golddiggie]

I typically count on having up to 3 quarts of loss when moving from the fermenting vessel (for my beers). As such, I make sure I get 6.75-7.25 gallons into it on brew day. This allows me to fill two 3 gallon corny kegs without issue (or picking up any trub). I also use a hop spider, so I'm not getting hop matter into fermenting vessel.

How much YOU will lose will also depend on the yeast strain, how well it flocculates, how long you leave it post active fermentation, etc. IMO, you need to learn your system/methods to offset what you typically loose. I would suggest narrowing down the yeast strains you use to as small a number as possible, to eliminate that variable.

 

[unionrdr]

There are racking losses as well. Unless you're oaking or ading fruit or the like,don't bother with secondary. And strain the chilled wort going into primary. I use a large fine mesh strainer,since I use plastic FV's. Less grainy hoppy trub stuff that way. It helps aerate it as well. That usually makes a couple bottle difference to me.

 

[TripleF]

All very helpful answers. Thank you.

 

[kingwood-kid]

I was curious to see how much beer I lost to hopping, so I weighed my hops on my last brew. 4.5oz dry was about 23 oz wet after I squeezed the bag. Moral of the story: hoppy beers will lose more volume. Yet another reason not to bitter with low-alpha hops. Along the same lines, a big beer will have more grain debris than a small one, although I suppose that simple sugar additions should be excepted. The more the yeast multiply, the more they will have to steal volume from your beer.

 

[BBL_Brewer]

If you shoot for 5.2 gallons in the fermenter you should get your 48 bottles and maybe a couple more.

 

[dzlater]

Measure how much you have after racking to keg or bottling bucket.
Then you will know how much is lost and increase your batch size by that much.