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Hot sauce making
All Containers›Shop by use case›Hot sauce making›Tools and directories›Batch yield calculatorShop all hot sauce and chili →
Tools

Batch yield calculator

By Dwight Davis, Founder

Updated

On this page4
Yield turns a recipe into a cost per bottle. Measure it once on a normal batch rather than estimating it from the ingredient list.

The arithmetic

1. Weigh everything in. Total input weight, in grams or pounds.

2. Weigh the finished batch after cooking, blending and any straining, before filling.

3. Count the bottles that came out and weigh a sample.

Reduction loss = input weight minus finished weight. Mostly water, plus strainer pulp if you strain.

Transfer loss = finished weight minus (bottles x average fill). What stayed in the pot, blender, strainer and funnel.

Bottles per batch = finished weight divided by target fill weight, minus transfer loss.

Where it goes

Cost per bottle
Total batch cost divided by bottles actually produced.
Not by bottles the recipe predicted. The gap between those two is where small producers lose money without seeing it.
Ingredient ordering
Order against yield, not against the recipe.
Buying to the recipe leaves you short by the reduction loss every time.
Break-even
Feed the real cost per bottle in.
A break-even built on an estimated yield is wrong by exactly the amount the estimate is wrong.

Worked example

Input 10,000 g. Finished after reduction and straining 7,400 g. Target fill 150 g per bottle. Bottles produced 46, average fill 152 g, so 6,992 g bottled.

Reduction and strain loss: 2,600 g, or 26 percent. Transfer loss: 408 g, or 5.5 percent of the finished batch. Bottles per 10 kg of input: 46, where the recipe arithmetic alone would have predicted 66.

That 30 percent gap is normal on a first measurement and it is the number that makes a price sustainable or not.

References

No published source. This page is written from practice rather than from published guidance. No extension service or agency publishes on this question for hot sauce, so nothing here is cited, and it should be weighed as experience and not as a standard.
Written from published extension guidance and federal publications, not from a laboratory. Your state's requirements and your own process govern anything general said here.