Finished Yield
Some recipes do not weigh the same when they are finished as they did when you added the ingredients. A syrup reduces on the stove, a stock cooks down, a jam boils off water. For these recipes, the sum of the inputs is not the real output, and costing against the inputs makes every portion look cheaper than it is.
Finished yield lets you tell Brikly the actual measured output of a recipe after it is made. Brikly then costs the recipe against that real figure instead of assuming the output equals the inputs.
Most recipes do not need finished yield. If your recipe does not lose or gain mass during preparation (a sandwich, a salad, a coffee), leave it blank and Brikly behaves exactly as before. Reach for finished yield when a recipe reduces, concentrates, or evaporates: syrups, reductions, stocks, jams, caramel, slow-cooked sauces.
Setting finished yield
When you create or edit a recipe, the recipe details show two optional fields:
- Finished weight (g) - what the batch weighs once it is made.
- Finished volume (ml) - what the batch measures once it is made.
Each field shows the raw inputs total beside it as a reference, so you can see at a glance how much your recipe reduces. Enter whichever you actually measured. You can enter one, the other, or both.
Finished yield works best when it is a real measurement. Weigh or measure the finished batch once, type it in, and Brikly handles the rest. You cannot reliably calculate it in advance, because reduction is rarely a neat percentage.
Worked example: green tea syrup
A green tea syrup is brewed and then reduced:
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| Green tea leaves | 80 g |
| Water | 2,000 ml |
| Caster sugar | 1,750 g |
Added together, the inputs come to well over 3.5 litres before cooking. After brewing and reducing, the finished batch measures 2,760 ml and weighs 3,200 g.
Say the batch costs £2.76 in ingredients. With the finished volume set to 2,760 ml, the syrup costs:
£2.76 / 2,760 ml = £0.001 per ml
A latte that uses 30 ml of the syrup is therefore costed at £0.03.
Without finished yield, Brikly would spread that same £2.76 across the roughly 3,800 ml of combined inputs, and the 30 ml would read closer to £0.022 - understating the cost by around a quarter. Across hundreds of drinks a week, that gap matters.
How finished yield is used
Costing the recipe when it is a component
When a recipe with a finished yield is used as a sub-recipe measured by weight or volume, Brikly divides the batch cost by the finished figure, not the input total. This is the core of the feature: every gram or millilitre you pour into another recipe is priced against what the batch actually produced.
If you do not set a finished figure, Brikly falls back to the input total, exactly as it did before. See Recipe Weight for how that input total is calculated.
Finished density
When you enter both a finished weight and a finished volume, Brikly works out the recipe's own density (finished weight divided by finished volume) and shows it beside the fields. For the syrup above that is roughly 1.16 g/ml.
This density is the recipe's equivalent of the density you can set on an ingredient. It lets a reduced recipe be used in another recipe by either unit. The syrup can be added to one drink as 30 ml and to another as 35 g, and both are costed correctly. It is also a useful sanity check: 17 ml of this syrup should weigh about 20 g, and the density confirms it.
If you only ever pour the syrup by volume, the finished volume alone is enough. If different recipes use it by weight and by volume, enter both so Brikly has the density it needs to convert between them.
Portioning by serving size
Finished yield also unlocks a second way to define how many portions a recipe makes. In the recipe details you can choose how portions are counted:
- Number of portions - you type the count directly, as before (see Creating recipes).
- Serving size - you enter the size of one serving, and Brikly works out the count for you.
In serving-size mode, the portion count is derived from the finished output divided by the serving size. For the green tea syrup with a finished volume of 2,760 ml, portioned at 30 ml per serving:
2,760 ml / 30 ml = 92 servings
Change the recipe or the reduction and the serving count re-derives itself, so your cost per serving always reflects what the batch really makes. Brikly recalculates this on the server when you save, so the saved figure is always authoritative.
Whichever method you choose, cost per portion is the batch cost divided by the number of portions. Serving-size mode simply works that number out from your finished yield and serving size, instead of asking you to count.
A note on version history
When you save a new version of a recipe, its finished weight, finished volume, density, portion basis, and serving size are stored on that version alongside the rest of the snapshot, so your recipe history keeps the full picture.