Hi group. I haven't made a visit here for quite awhile. Hope all you winos are doing fine.
Here's my story.
For the past almost 14 years, I've been working with two 18.9 litre glass carboys, one 30 litre (to the brim) graduated every 5 liters plastic primary, and one non-graduated plastic primary that originally contained 23 litres wine grape juice.
I started my batch of rhubarb wine at the beginning of the month. I had 72 lbs of frozen rhubarb, so I knew I was going to need more equipment (plus my two 18.9 litre carboys are filled and bulk aging other wines). So I bought two "10 gallon" plastic primaries, with a single graduation at 22.7 litres. I also bought four 23 litre glass carboys (I think they really work out to
22.7 litre, but they call them 23's) and one 11.3 litre glass carboy. I started with my old 30 litre primary, and racked the batch into a new "10 gallon", marking the new primary every 5 litres. When it got to the 22.7 litre mark on the new primary, the old appeared to be down the appropriate amount, which confirmed to me that the mark was in the correct place. I continued until I had marks every 5 litres up to 40 litres. I then measured each mark and transfered them over to the second "10 gallon" primary I bought.After all the ingredients were added, I had two batches that were pretty much bang on 40 litres each. It wasn't later that I realized that this happened to be the perfect volume for my new glass primaries, assuming very little was lost in the racking. 23+23+23+11.3 litres was the four carboys I needed.
But when I racked, I didn't have the volume I expected. There was minimal loss left in the bottom of the two primaries. I got the three 23 litre carboys filled into the neck, but then only had slightly less than 6 litres left, not the 10 to 11 I had expected.
What happened? Are carboys filled into the neck way over their stated volume? I only lost a half litre at most during racking. And inaccuracies in the volume marks on my old primary (the marking lines are about 1/8" thick) don't seem to be enough to be that far off.
Thanks, Dan