DIY Simple semi automated bottle filler ($40)

[OlavP]

After increasing our batch size, we were faced with bottling 500 bottles instead of 50. We needed something to save us time! We could only find expensive bottle fillers, so we decided to make a simple and cheap one.

We're so happy with the design that we figured it could be worth sharing. Especially because we were not able to find any simple DIY bottle fillers when browsing the web.

It uses bottling wands that are attached to a stand with a shelf to rest the bottle on while it is being filled.

Parts needed:
2 Bottling wands
2 Airlock gaskets
4 Feet silicone tube
1 Bucket
2 Spigots
2-3 plastic boxes make assemble stand (use quite thick plastic)

If you're a DIY person I guess you can figure out how to make your own version from the pictures below. It needs to be fitted to your bottle size.

The wands will start filling as you push the bottle up to release the valve in the wand. The pressure is maintained by letting the bottle sit on a small shelf while filling.

The wand is held in place by an airlock gasket. This allows for enough flexibility to tilt the wand outwards when inserting it into the bottles and lifting the bottles up past the shelf.

The airlock also allows for easy adjustment of height/length of the wands. This is critical to make sure valve is kept open while bottle is resting on shelf.

Make sure to drill a small enough hole for the gasket. Just enough to be able to insert the wand through it. If it is too wide the height/length of the wand might not be maintained when pressure is applied.

We designed out bottle filler to fit 4 wands, but because the wands keep filling beer until the bottle is removed we found it very hard to manage more than 2 bottles at a time.

Two drawbacks of the design:
1) The wands keep filling the bottles until they are removed. Hence you have to keep a close watch to not over fill.
2) The system uses gravity, so you have to lift the bucket quite high to get a high flow rate. And if you have a lot of beer, you have to replace the bucket quite often. We have a plan to solve this with a pump that refills the bucket (controlled by a liquid level switch).

 

[Jsslack]

Pretty great idea.

 

[Misplaced_Canuck]

I could see a spring-loaded version, where the bottom "shelf" is adjustable via a spring, and that it creates a seal with the stopper at the top. This would prevent overflowing bottles. It would allow for misc-sized bottles, too.

MC

 

[Swifty]

I like this idea very much. It's opperating a lot like the siphon fillers I've been trying to convence myself I need (350 or lame plastic takes a lot of convincing).

The stopper sealing would stop the flow unless there was a needle and seat w a float intagrated somehow.

Good build.

 

[OlavP]

@Misplaced_Canuck - Not sure I completely understood your idea. But (from the limited understanding) it sounds like a lot more moving parts? And then a lot of things can go wrong...

@Swifty - The major inspiration for the build is actually siphon fillers

You could get the same effect from our design by adding one more bucket to it. One higher up filling the lower through an auto-sparge arm or similar. The lower bucket would have to be placed at a height where liquid level in bucket is at level with desired fill level in bottle. Only problem is that this gives a much slower flow rate into the bottles. I don't think it would add that much efficiency.
So far we have filled ~1500 bottles, no one overflowing and all filled within a 1/2" fill level.

 

[BadNewsBrewery]

I think where Misplaced_Canuck was going (or at least where it got me going) was the idea of setting the bottles on top of some sort of calibrated spring. It'd be pretty difficult, but in theory you could get it set up where the spring on the bottom of the bottle puts pressure on it, which compresses the nozzle on the fill wand and gets the bottle filled up. After the bottle gets to the right fill level (and thus the right weight), the spring on the bottom would compress which would lower the bottle away from the fill wand and the bottle would stop filling.

You'd have to use the same weight bottles, and it would change with the density of the beer... and I'm not sure you can find a spring that holds steady up until 99% full and then drops down enough after the bottle is full... but that's the general idea, I think.

Might be easier to do with a load-cell and an electronic flow valve. Load cell measures the weight of the bottle, when it gets to full, it closes the valve, and you can remove it and put a new one in. You could easily fill a dozen bottles at a time that way.

 

[Misplaced_Canuck]

Not quite. I was referring to a spring that would hold the bottle in place, and the rubber stopper (or whatever it's called) would prevent any over-filling. But after thinking about this with a cup of coffee instead of a homebrew, the bottle wouldn't fill as the inside pressure would be too great after an ounce or two.

MC

 

[Mikko]

I have thought that would it be possible to attach somekind of floater to thin bottle filling wand.

Idea is that when beer level rises to that floater, eventually bottling wand starts to float and as wand does not hit the bottom anymore, liquid flow is stopped. Easy automatic filling level wand To set filling level you just slide floater up or down.

Everything must be very light and hose must be attached somehow to take off it's weight from bottling wand.

 

[OlavP]

@Mikko: I have seen different ideas on using floters/weights on bottle etc. I think it would be very hard to make gravity close a valve. It would need heavy calibration.

Note that the wand's valve is spring loaded. It needs a fairly high upwards push to open the valve. This means you would need the "resistance" in the wand to withstand the upward push needed to open the valve, but not to withstand the upward pressure generated by the float. When placing the bottle in position you would have to be very careful not to push too hard.

I do not think a mechanically driven stopping device will be accurate enough.

If you want to stop the flow look towards A: Electronics (e.g. in combination with a float level) or B: siphon

I have so far filled ~2000 bottles. I have only overfilled once. It is not really a problem.

 

[Mikko]

Note that the wand's valve is spring loaded. It needs a fairly high upwards push to open the valve. This means you would need the "resistance" in the wand to withstand the upward push needed to open the valve, but not to withstand the upward pressure generated by the float. When placing the bottle in position you would have to be very careful not to push too hard.

I have bottling wand without spring, wands own weight opens it , no need to press down. So floater solution may be possible, however as I havent seen any for sale, it probably means that you are correct and at least easy solution does not exist.

I do not think a mechanically driven stopping device will be accurate enough.

If you want to stop the flow look towards A: Electronics (e.g. in combination with a float level) or B: siphon

I have so far filled ~2000 bottles. I have only overfilled once. It is not really a problem.

I actually just ordered 3 head siphon filler, VERY CHEAP model (~$80), probably needs more or less finetuning to get it to work.

 

[OlavP]

Quote:
Originally Posted by OlavP View Post
Note that the wand's valve is spring loaded. It needs a fairly high upwards push to open the valve. This means you would need the "resistance" in the wand to withstand the upward push needed to open the valve, but not to withstand the upward pressure generated by the float. When placing the bottle in position you would have to be very careful not to push too hard.

I have bottling wand without spring, wands own weight opens it , no need to press down. So floater solution may be possible, however as I havent seen any for sale, it probably means that you are correct and at least easy solution does not exist.

Aha, I have only seen bottling wands with springs. Could work, but I think it would be complicated.

Yes, I have heard of those cheaper siphon fillers (after making the one I have). Let me know if it's operating well.

 

[kh54s10]

How do you make the 2 bottles fill at the same rate and/or how do you keep one from overflowing before the other one is filled?

 

[OlavP]

How do you make the 2 bottles fill at the same rate and/or how do you keep one from overflowing before the other one is filled?

You don't. If one is full before the other, you take it off the stand to stop filling that bottle. Unless the wands get clogged with hops (from dry hopping), they will fill at almost the same speed. They are full within the same second.

 

[lakedawgs]

We have two bottling spigots on our buckets like you do but put the bottling wands on the spigots with only a couple of inches of tubing. Put the full bottling bucket on a milk crate on the table, wants hang off the side and away we go.

Very easy and your only cost and construction is to buy an extra spigot and wand and cut a 2nd hole in your bucket, done.

We have a 53 gallon bourbon barrel in my basement and 3 of us with dbl wand bottling buckets can drain the barrel, fill bottles, rinse barrel, refill barrel, in about 4-5hrs, not too bad.

 

[volkvanmyn25]

I think where Misplaced_Canuck was going (or at least where it got me going) was the idea of setting the bottles on top of some sort of calibrated spring. It'd be pretty difficult, but in theory you could get it set up where the spring on the bottom of the bottle puts pressure on it, which compresses the nozzle on the fill wand and gets the bottle filled up. After the bottle gets to the right fill level (and thus the right weight), the spring on the bottom would compress which would lower the bottle away from the fill wand and the bottle would stop filling.


You'd have to use the same weight bottles, and it would change with the density of the beer... and I'm not sure you can find a spri





Might be easier to do with a load-cell and an electronic flow valve. Load cell measures the weight of the bottle, when it gets to full, it closes the valve, and you can remove it and put a new one in. You could easily fill a dozen bottles at a time that way.

Thanks for the load-cell idea . I might even take it a step further and build a small conveyor belt with a strong enough stepper motor drive for accurate bottle positioning control.:rockin:

 

[CoopDvr]

Nice! I like this setup. I keg now because I hated the tedious bottling process; but some batches I would rather bottle, and not have to run through my draft system to do so.

I have a somewhat simpler idea for managing more bottles without springs, load-cells, etc...

How about running the wands through double hole stoppers that seal to the bottles. Then run a thin overflow tube out of the other hole. Once a bottle is full, it would overflow into a sanitized reservoir. When the bottle is removed from the wand, the fill level within the bottle will drop to the optimum fill height. If the shelf can keep enough pressure on the wand to keep the valve open, it should have enough pressure to keep snug in the stopper.

Of course, you would calculate the optimum number of bottles to manage with minimal overflow; but would no longer need to stress over keeping as close of a watch on each bottle. This could easily allow you to "juggle" 6 or so bottles at a time in rotation instead of 2. Once your reservoir filled to a certain point, you could just add it back into your bottling bucket.

 

[volkvanmyn25]

Nice! I like this setup. I keg now because I hated the tedious bottling process; but some batches I would rather bottle, and not have to run through my draft system to do so.

I have a somewhat simpler idea for managing more bottles without springs, load-cells, etc...

How about running the wands through double hole stoppers that seal to the bottles. Then run a thin overflow tube out of the other hole. Once a bottle is full, it would overflow into a sanitized reservoir. When the bottle is removed from the wand, the fill level within the bottle will drop to the optimum fill height. If the shelf can keep enough pressure on the wand to keep the valve open, it should have enough pressure to keep snug in the stopper.

Of course, you would calculate the optimum number of bottles to manage with minimal overflow; but would no longer need to stress over keeping as close of a watch on each bottle. This could easily allow you to "juggle" 6 or so bottles at a time in rotation instead of 2. Once your reservoir filled to a certain point, you could just add it back into your bottling bucket.

I like this idea. Been thinking of this aswell. You can even make a multi tier system where the overfill of one stopper fills up the next bottle and so on. The last bottle overflows into a sanitized jar.

 

[RadicalEd]

Very simple and very effective. I like it! Only issue would be that you need all the same size bottles, and I usually have 3 sizes in a given batch .

 

[Snow4phil]

Wound you be able to see how much tubing it takes to fill a bottle then once that tube is full close the valve, and fill. It should be empty before the bottle overfills.