Volume of Speidel Tanks

[crushday]

I’m so confused with the volumes of my Speidel tanks. On January 6th, I started some Sauvignon Blanc from 7 frozen buckets of 100% juice from Yakima, Washington. Each bucket contains 5.25 gallons of juice. I had 7 buckets, which simple math says is 36.75 gallons. But, let’s just call it 36 gallons. Last night (January 20, 2024) I checked Brix and it was sitting at -1.5 so today, I moved the wine to 120L Speidel to settle out. I filled the Speidel, 31.7 gallons - according to conversion charts - and had prepared a carboy for the balance. I never used the carboy and the Speidel is “mostly” full. There’s no way I could have lost 4 gallons of wine. Any explanations?

 

[ratflinger]

The rated capacity and what they will actually hold is 2 different things. I use 20L (5.3 gal) Speidels for my pre-filtering rack. When I completely fill them they will just hold the entirety of my 23L kit, so with an airlock I can let them sit for a month, as it's topped up. Speidel allows for headspace.

 

[mainshipfred]

Using the dimensions given on their website for a flat bottom 120 L the dimensions are 34.7" high by 17'3" diameter. When you do the math to find the volume it works out to be 35.29 gallons. This is the outermost dimensions so there is that error. The volumes still differ a little but it's a lot closer.

Either that or the angels weren't feeling any pain yesterday.

 

[crushday]

Fred, that is incredibly helpful! That makes a much more sense... Thanks for helping to figure that out!!

 

[Jim Welch]

Also playing a role, albeit minor, the yeast reproduce wildly. Converting sugar and nutrients that are in solution at the start into yeast cells. I’m always amazed how I start with ~10 g of yeast and can generally fill a quart ball jar (+/-) with the leftover yeast slurry and after cold crashing end up, again generally, with over a pint of fairly solid yeast from a 6 gallon batch.