Coming up short on final volume

Need a little feedback before I commit on this

So I'm doing mainly extract + steeping grains - partial boil of about 3.4gal. I then top up the primary to five gallons prior to fermenting.
However after leaving behind a bit of brew going from primary to secondary -- then drawing at least three samples (OG - end of primary FG - and a TG from the secondary) -- and leaving a bit behind in the secondary ..... a lot of times I'm left with 4.25 - to 4.5gal at the end.

So I'm going to tweak the next recipe for a final volume of 5.3gal. In BeerSmith you can use the scale function - and the result is BeerSmith basically increases the malts to make up for the dilution. Or you can alter your equipment setting (create a new profile) and then tweak up the grains / extract to get back to where you were at the lower batch volume.

Any pros - cons - warnings on doing this ?? Gotta brew on Friday ! 

I brew 5.5G or 20.82L. I leave everything the same as with a 5G batch. This way i always have 5G at the end for bottling or kegging. Setup your equipment, create a base recipe(No grains, yeast, or hops) and then go to Action menu item and select "Save recipe as default". From then on all batches will be based on this.

Pros: More Beer!
Cons: Slightly less gravity. Anywhere from .003 - .009 points depending on the recipe.

I personally want more beer!  ;D

Cheers
Preston

Thanks for the tip Preston... I have been tweaking thing every brew. It's nicer to be able to work smarter, not harder! ;D

I set BeerSmith to make 6 gallon batches.  I learned this from JZ's book where he suggest doing the same thing.  I find when I go from primary to secondary there is a significant amount of yeast and trub at the bottom and I lost close to a gallon each time so I end up with around five gallons going into secondary, or keg.

I think scaling my beer up to 6 gallons is a good idea because it allows me to keep good precise records in BeerSmith while still ending up with 5 gallons.  Another pro is that often times I don't lose exactly a gallon of beer through trub and fallen yeast so after I move five gallons over to the second stage I have a few bottles of beer left over so it gives me a chance to bottle anywhere between 2-6 bottles of beer to store for much later use. 

Thanks for the comments --- I think I'll be scaling up to 5.5 gallons and see how that goes. As I am admittedly lazy on the whole yeast process (sprinkle and go) I'm concerned going to 6gal might throw off the yeast to wort ratio ...

Sss, as you get more daring with yeast ranching/starters, you'll have plenty of yeast power.  I have been using 1 gallon growlers for starters. Probably 3qt total, then decanting the spent wort and pitching tons of slurry.

SOGOAK said:

Sss, as you get more daring with yeast ranching/starters, you'll have plenty of yeast power.  I have been using 1 gallon growlers for starters. Probably 3qt total, then decanting the spent wort and pitching tons of slurry.

Click to expand...

Yes I will do that in the future ---- when I last tried a starter with dry yeast it flopped. But at that time I know I rushed things feeling like "split second timing" was important etc.  I should have waited another 20min before pitching so I could have gotten the wort and yeast temps closer together (and also not rush the cooling of the starter)