I went to brew a Fat Tire-like amber yesterday and made a kick-ass starter. I planned on making a 5.5 gal. batch, 7 gal. boil, to have a little left over for loss in racking/trub absorption/etc. Things went along smoothly until I start siphoning off the wort into my 6.5 carboy, with marks at 4, 4.5, 5, 5.5, and 6 gal., and it only filled up to 4 gal. I have a spoon that I've notched off at gallon levels in my kettle and at 5.5 gallons to hit my mark.
Apparently, though, I only filled the kettle to 5.5 gallons, and boiled down to about 4. The gravity reading confirmed that I missed the volume big time. I diluted it with filtered h2o to get the gravity (and it will be fine), but I am still about 3 quarts under the volume.
Clearly, I made a mistake. No, the mistake was not in filling the kettle to the wrong mark on the spoon-- it was brewing beer ON VALENTINES DAY and doing it without drinking anything. Obviously, the beer gods frowned upon this double faux-pas, and it cost me 96 oz. of precious wort. I've learned my lesson. Next valentines day, I'm having a few homebrew before I brew, and telling the wife we'll have V-Day on the 15th. THat'll appease the gods.
