Working out your yield

Yield is the number that turns a recipe into a cost per bottle, and it is usually estimated rather than measure it.

Why it is never what the recipe says

Input weight is not output weight. Water leaves in reduction. Pulp leaves in straining. Product stays in the pot, the blender, the strainer and the funnel, and that loss is proportionally worst on small batches.

Then fill variance: aiming slightly over the declared weight on every bottle is correct and it costs yield.

Measure it once, properly

Weigh everything in. Weigh the finished batch before filling. Count the bottles that came out and weigh a sample of them. The difference between those numbers is your real loss, and it will be larger than you expect the first time.

Do it on a normal batch, not a careful one. A yield figure from a run where you scraped every vessel is not the figure that predicts next month.

What it feeds

Cost per bottle, which sets your price floor. Ingredient ordering, since buying to the recipe rather than to the yield leaves you short. And the break-even, which is wrong by exactly the amount your yield estimate is wrong.

It also tells you whether a process change paid for itself. A finer strain that improves the product and costs eight percent of the batch is a trade you should make knowingly.

Improving it

Scrape properly and cost the minute. A silicone spatula recovers a surprising fraction of a small batch.

Use the strainer pulp rather than discarding it. It is the most concentrated material you produced and it becomes a paste, a rub or a second product.

And size the batch to the equipment. Losses are largely fixed per vessel, so a bigger batch in the same pot carries proportionally less of them, which is part of why batch size is an economic decision rather than a convenience one.

References