Yield Question

[Scott_W]

We have a 30BBL brewhouse and are having trouble with figuring out why we are getting a much lower yield when kegging. On a 30 BBL brew we are averaging 50 half barrel kegs. That means we are loosing 155 gallons somewhere. What is typical, how much beer should we expect to be loosing?

[CraftBeerIndia]

4-6%

4-6% is what we are averaging...also on a "30BBL" system
this is our loss from running down a fermenter to our net package yield

[gitchegumee]

How do you know?

Standard for kettle to fermenter loss is about 4% shrinkage and trub. But with today's mega-hopped beers, this will go up considerably. How do you measure your kettle volume? How do you measure your keg volume? Are you sure that you're measuring apples to apples? Do you measure your wort in the whirlpool? After heat exchanger in the fermenter? Do you have a standard procedure for dropping fermenter bottoms? Do you have a zwickle pigtail that gets used a bit too much by employees "sampling"? Seems like if you are missing volume that you should do some accounting by measuring your fermenter bottoms and your trub loss. Good luck!