A standard Australian fresh wort kit contains 23 litres of wort and produces roughly 20 litres of finished beer after fermentation and packaging. In familiar Australian formats, that's about 53 stubbies or 30 longneck bottles, which works out to roughly 2.5 cartons of beer per kit.
That's the short answer. The longer answer covers why those numbers aren't quite the same as the 23L on the label, what affects the yield in practice, and how to plan a brew schedule around it.
Where the numbers come from
The 23 litres of wort in the kit doesn't translate directly to 23 litres of bottled beer. There's a small but consistent loss at three points in the process.
1. Headspace at the start
You don't fill the fermenter to the brim. Wort needs around 4-5 litres of empty space above it for the krausen (the foam layer that forms during active fermentation) to expand into. So the 23 litres of wort starts in a fermenter with at least 25-litre capacity.
This isn't strictly a "loss" — you still have all 23 litres — but it explains why the fermenter you buy needs to be bigger than the wort volume.
2. Trub left behind
At the bottom of the fermenter after fermentation, you'll have a layer of sediment called trub — dead yeast cells, protein, and hop residue settled out of the beer. This is roughly 1-2 litres of unrecoverable material that you leave behind when transferring the clear beer above it into bottles or a keg.
3. Bottle-fill loss
Between the bottling wand drips, the foam that overflows the last bottle, and the small amount left in the bottling vessel, you lose another 0.5-1 litre to handling during packaging.
Add those losses up — 1.5-3 litres total across the process — and the realistic finished volume from a 23-litre kit lands at around 20-21 litres of beer in bottles or in the keg.
23 litres in the kit → ~20 litres in bottles. The 3-litre gap is mainly trub left behind and small handling losses.
What that means in Australian beer formats
Twenty litres is an abstract number. Translated into how Australians actually buy and drink beer:
- 375ml stubbies / cans: 20,000ml ÷ 375 = 53 bottles per kit
- 640ml longnecks: 20,000ml ÷ 640 = 31 bottles per kit
- 500ml pints: 20,000ml ÷ 500 = 40 pours per kit
- 285ml middies / pots: 20,000ml ÷ 285 = 70 pours per kit
- 24-can cartons: 53 stubbies ÷ 24 = roughly 2.2 cartons (often rounded to 2.5)
- 30-can slabs: 53 stubbies ÷ 30 = around 1.75 slabs
The most common framing among Australian homebrewers is "a carton and a half to two cartons per batch." That tracks if you're thinking in 30-can slabs; in 24-can cartons it's closer to two and a quarter cartons.
What affects the yield
The numbers above are typical. A few variables shift them.
Fermentation activity
Beers that ferment with a lot of vigorous activity push more wort up into the krausen, where some of it can get carried out through the airlock or stick to the lid. Healthy fermentations typically lose a few hundred millilitres this way. Sluggish fermentations don't.
Dry hopping
If you add dry hops to the fermenter post-fermentation, those hops absorb wort. A 100g dry hop addition can soak up 200-400ml of beer that you can't recover. Heavy dry-hop schedules (300g+) lose 1-1.5 litres of finished beer to hop absorption alone.
Transfer technique
Careful siphoning, leaving the trub layer untouched, gets you closer to 21 litres. Aggressive tipping that drags trub into your bottles wastes both volume and beer quality. The slower you transfer, the more you keep.
Packaging format
Kegging typically wastes less than bottling. A keg gets filled in one operation with one handling loss; bottling 53 individual containers involves 53 small handling losses that add up.
What style you brew
High-gravity beers (over 1.060 OG) tend to leave more trub. Low-gravity beers (under 1.040) leave less. The standard Hazy Pale Ale gravity range of 1.045-1.055 produces typical yields.
How that compares to other methods
Worth a quick reference for context. All these figures assume a similar 23-litre starting batch size:
- Tin extract kits typically make 23 litres in the fermenter → ~20 litres bottled. Roughly the same as fresh wort.
- Recipe extract typically yields ~20 litres bottled from a 23-litre batch.
- BIAB and all-grain brewers can target any volume they want, from 5-litre pilot batches to 30-litre house batches. The norm sits around 19-23 litres finished.
Fresh wort doesn't have a yield advantage or disadvantage versus other methods at the same batch size. It's just standardised at 23 litres of wort per kit.
Planning around the yield
Two practical implications worth knowing.
How long one batch lasts
For a person who drinks 1-2 stubbies a few nights a week, 53 stubbies covers around 5-8 weeks of casual consumption. Faster drinkers (or households with multiple drinkers) get through a batch faster — a couple sharing a few stubbies each evening might finish a batch in 2-3 weeks. Heavier social drinkers planning a party or a gathering can blow through a batch in a single weekend.
How to plan a brew rhythm
A 23-litre kit takes about 4 weeks from brew day to ready-to-drink. If you brew a new kit every 4 weeks, you'll have continuous fresh beer with one batch always in the bottle conditioning and one always fermenting. Most homebrewers naturally land on a 2-6 week brew cadence depending on consumption.
For the precise brewing process and timeline, see our how to brew from a fresh wort kit guide. For storage advice on the unfermented kit before brew day, see our shelf life guide. For broader context on what a fresh wort kit is, see our complete fresh wort kit guide.