Not getting 12 bottles from a kettle

I’m a first-time brewer, just brewed my first gallon batch of Caribou Slobber. Followed instructions and bottled today. I was surprised that I only got 9 bottles out the kettle. I tried to get as much out as possible without tapping into the sludge at the bottom. Has anyone gotten 12 bottles (12 oz) out of a gallon kettle? How do you do it? Seems you would have to fill it to the very top and have almost no sludge at the bottom. Thanks for your help.
Dave

Assuming you mean the 1-gallon jug the kits have you use as a fermenter, I don’t think it’s physically possible. Twelve 12-ounce bottles hold 144 ounces, or 1 1/8 gallon.

They’re probably just telling you to have twelve bottles on hand in case you need an extra for whatever reason.

Thanks. I assumed the kettles held enough for 12 bottles and then some, since the amount of water you are asked to start with is 1.25 gallons. Assuming a little bit of that will boil off or ferment off, I was expecting enough for 12 bottles.

Could the 1 gallon brew kits make enough for 12 bottles, and does NB sell something a little larger than the kettle to let you do that–something between the 1 gallon and 5 gallon fermentors?
Dave

You keep saying “kettle” - are you bottling straight out of the brewpot? :?

Next size up from the 1 gallon jugs is a 3 gallon carboy, which will yield about a case of beer. The next size up for extract kits is 5 gallons, though.

Keep in mind there’s a lot of variability in brew size, and people seem to define this differently. For example, consider the standard “5 gallon batch”. This can be defined as either 5 gallons boiled, 5 gallons chilled, 5 gallons fermented, or 5 bottled/kegged. This is due to volume losses, boil off, chill contraction, trub loss, etc at each step of the process. So if you want to bottle 5 gallons (or 1 gallon in your situation), you really need to boil, chill, ferment more than this.