Ratio of knock out volume to beer in kegs

[briangaylor]

We have been up and running for 2 months now and want to do a few sanity checks on our results.

If you were to have 20bbl of beer leaving your kettle or whirlpool, how much would you expect to end up as brite beer in kegs? We are coming in at a lower ratio than I expected but wanted to ask the class...

We could be perfectly normal in our results however my cost analysis assumed we would get a few more kegs out of each batch.

Thanks!

Brian

[Todd Hicks]

The important step in brewing is to track as many variables as possible so that you may improve efficiency and document errors.

Off the top of my head, here are some average figures that I will let you translate. This was for a 14 bbl brewhouse in a brewpub primarily using serving tanks.


Starting Kettle Wort : 17.50 bbls
Post-boil Kettle Wort : 16.50 bbls 90 min boil
Trub loss -0.50 bbls : 16.00 bbls -8.6% kettle loss
Wort expansion -4% : 15.35 bbls -0.65 bbls
Yeast addition : 15.65 bbls +0.30 bbls
Filtration : 15.00 bbls -0.65 bbls
Bright Beer : 15.00 bbls -14.3% production loss


My productions averages out to about 12% losses on filtered beer (DE). 10% losses with unfiltered beer.

[Todd Hicks]

For a 20 bbl run, depending on your milage I would start with 22.75 to 23 bbls wort pre-boil.

Brews with a lot of hops in them will generate much more volume loss, maybe even double. There are creative ways to reduce this.