Okay, so I make a decent amount of beer, but hardly drink any of it. I want it all in bottles so I can share it with friends easily. Right? But I still don't really like the bottling process.
So I'm putting together a plan to build a semi-automatic bottling line in my garage. I already have the counter space, buckets, and capper, all I need is a pump, a timed valve, and a way of filling several bottles at once.
Based on parts I know I can get for cheap, I'm thinking something like this:
Obviously the speed is off, but you get the idea. The raising and lowering of the fill tubes would be done by hand, but the actual filling would be done by pressing a button to start a timed fill from the pump. I'd time it so that the bottles wouldn't overflow while I was working on the capping.
What I'm pretty sure won't work in this setup is the six-tube manifold. I assume that the first bottle will fill a lot faster than the last one, right? Or will they fill evenly if I pump the beer in at a high enough pressure? Is there any way I could set this up to get all six bottles to fill evenly?
Also, I haven't used a pump yet, will using it with the bottling bucket disturb the beer too much? It'll be pumping against a closed valve for part of this, and I'm hoping it won't create turbulence or anything while that's happening.
Any suggestions would be welcome!
So I'm putting together a plan to build a semi-automatic bottling line in my garage. I already have the counter space, buckets, and capper, all I need is a pump, a timed valve, and a way of filling several bottles at once.
Based on parts I know I can get for cheap, I'm thinking something like this:
Obviously the speed is off, but you get the idea. The raising and lowering of the fill tubes would be done by hand, but the actual filling would be done by pressing a button to start a timed fill from the pump. I'd time it so that the bottles wouldn't overflow while I was working on the capping.
What I'm pretty sure won't work in this setup is the six-tube manifold. I assume that the first bottle will fill a lot faster than the last one, right? Or will they fill evenly if I pump the beer in at a high enough pressure? Is there any way I could set this up to get all six bottles to fill evenly?
Also, I haven't used a pump yet, will using it with the bottling bucket disturb the beer too much? It'll be pumping against a closed valve for part of this, and I'm hoping it won't create turbulence or anything while that's happening.
Any suggestions would be welcome!
Last edited by a moderator: