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Bottling large volumes

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yabodie

Senior Member
Lifetime GotMead Patron
Mar 17, 2006
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Hey Folks,
In planning how we go about packaging our product, we were wondering what methods do you all use to bottle 50+ gallons of mead. What equipment, time investment, etc would be most helpful in planning/purchasing.

We were thinking on bottling straight out of secondary so a pre-filter would be required.

Cheers!
 
kinda out of my lane here, but buon vino makes a duber that fills pretty quick.

it's their Fill Jet

then there are the gravity fillers that can do 5 bottles at a time: from midwest supply

these are geared more for "home brewers" than commercial. i'm sure there are more automatic fillers that work off a conveyor however.
 
Thanks for the links and other options for filler. I have a feeling that the limiting reagent in this process will be the human aspect. Just how quickly can people bottle large volumes, without automation?

The number of bottles the filler can process is one thing (200-400/hour), but how many can a team of say two people process in an hour?

By process I mean, fill, cork, close and label.

Cheers!
 
yabodie said:
Hey Folks,
In planning how we go about packaging our product, we were wondering what methods do you all use to bottle 50+ gallons of mead. What equipment, time investment, etc would be most helpful in planning/purchasing.

We were thinking on bottling straight out of secondary so a pre-filter would be required.

Cheers!
Click to expand...


We use an Enolmatic vacuum filler and two filter housings with 1 and .45 micron filters. It works pretty well. Then we just cork using a standard Portuguese floor corker.

Our volume is roughly 60 gallon batches, about 25 cases, and takes about 6 hours total with two people. We could probably cut an hour or so off with a third helper, too.

We are small, but growing. We find the hard ways of doing things first! :)

Matt
 
Was basically gonna suggest what Matt said.

But also, as long as you have the space, well its only the actual bottling and corking stage that are "time sensitive" (potential oxidation and hygiene reasons). The seals/shrink caps and labels can be done slower (hell you can even make a jig for the correct/consistent positioning for labels) to achieve as professional appearance as possible.......
 
fatbloke said:
Was basically gonna suggest what Matt said.

But also, as long as you have the space, well its only the actual bottling and corking stage that are "time sensitive" (potential oxidation and hygiene reasons). The seals/shrink caps and labels can be done slower (hell you can even make a jig for the correct/consistent positioning for labels) to achieve as professional appearance as possible.......
Click to expand...

We usually dont label right away either, if we did it would probably take an additional hour or so.
 
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