Bottling your homebrewed beer doesn’t have to be a chore. There are two brewing gadgets that it much easier: the bottle tree and bottle rinser (also known as a vinator).
Beer Bottle Tree
Holds 45 beer bottles in sizes of 12 oz., 16 oz. (flip-top style), 22 oz., or odd volumes under 22 oz.
Pros:
- Easily beer bottles by hanging on the tree.
- Frees up space for storage.
- Rotates, making it easy to grab bottles when filling.
Cons:
- Still a large structure and takes up a lot of vertical space.
- Doesn’t hold enough 12 oz. bottles for a 5-gallon batch. You must include larger ones or have additional 12 oz’ers.
Price: $20-$30. Check MoreBeer.com for current pricing.
Overall: Recommended. I was tired of taking up valuable shelf space with empty bottles, plus the self-draining feature is a big time saver. And unlike much homebrew equipment, the beer bottle drying rack is not very expensive.
Bottle Rinser (Vinator)
Pros:
- Very quickly sanitizes bottles
- Sanitizer spray covers every bit of the inside
- Small
Cons:
- There really aren’t any but if I had to name one it is that the nozzle sometimes comes loose when pumping, but it’s really not a big deal.
Price: $15-$20. Check MoreBeer.com for current pricing.
Overall: Recommended. Before I bought the bottle rinser, I would fill a bucket with sanitizer and submerge the bottles a few at a time, let them sit for a few minutes, then drain and repeat. It took forever and I’d usually wind up soaked. I love this little gadget and it also saves on water, which is always good thing.
Write down in the comments if you own any of these products or are thinking about getting them and have questions.
Cheers!
Click Here to Read the Transcript
Hey it’s Billy Broas from BillyBrew.com. I don’t think I’m alone when I say that as a homebrewer, bottling is my least favorite part of the homebrewing process. I love making the beer, but it comes to bottling, it takes a long time, you have to sanitize all those bottles, and if you don’t have someone there to help you cap, it makes it that much worse.
So, you know homebrewing does take up a lot of time and I’m always trying to find shortcuts while maintaining quality beer. And these two tools, the bottle rinser and the bottle tree, have made bottling a whole lot easier, they’ve made life easier in general, and I would say that I even like the bottling process now. So I’m going to talk about these two things, and why I think if you are a homebrewer, you should invest in them. I’ll start with the bottle rinser.
The bottle rinser is really just a bowl with a pump in the middle. You put in your sanitizer; I always use Star-San. Then you pump the bottle a few times and the sanitizer rinses the bottle out and it drains back into the bowl. So I’ll show you an example of how I do that on bottling day. As you can see I’ve got my bottle rinser, bottle tree all organized. I take a bottle and give a few pumps with the Star-San, and then put it up on the tree. As you can see in the close up, it gets all up in the bottle and then drains nicely and cleanly back into the bowl.
So I’m all done sanitizing and the bottles are hanging on the bottle tree, ready for beer. I’ll talk for a second about the bottle tree. It’s really great because it allows the sanitizer to drain out completely without making a mess. It holds 45 bottles, which is a problem if you are using 12 ounce bottles because it won’t hold enough for a 5 gallon batch. So you either have to do what I do and use a few bigger bottles which it will hold, or have some extra 12 ounce bottles set off to the side. It’s also great because when I’m bottling I can keep it right next to me where it will rotate around, making it easy to grab the bottle off the bottle tree and fill them up. So I’ll show you how I do that.
Very convenient, I’ve got the bottle tree right next to me where it makes it easy to take them and fill them up. I used to grab them off the counter which was a pain in the ass. So I just fill it up, grab a cap, set it aside, and then go back for another. So there we have it, we have the bottle rinser and the bottle tree. They make life a whole lot easier on you as a homebrewer, and I highly recommend that you get them. You’re going to wish you did it earlier I promise you that. The prices are pretty good too. The bottle rinser is $15 and the bottle tree is $25-$30. It’s well worth it. If you have these, let me know how you like them. Cheers.
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{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
The vinator was the best bottling time saver I bought. The jet bottle rinser would be a close second.
My wife picked up a bottle tree for me at a garage sale, and it has stackable segments…and can hold more 12oz. bottles than a 5 gallon batch would need, (77 bottles) and the vinator mounts on top. So larger ones are available.
Cheers
I’m posting this video on our cigar forum. I guess this is similiar to corking home made wine.
Thanks for the infor..
Billy… The more I watch your videos and the more I read your blog… The more I want to brew my own beer… Patricia Porter has been out of stock for the past 3 weeks at all 5 of the area stores and supermarkets… I’m missing good beer…
.-= BrianJ | Online Business Blogger´s last blog ..HTML – Tables =-.
@Jeff Yea the bottle rinser is great too. Especially when you let a used bottle sit too long and need to blast some junk out of it. That’s awesome you got one of the big ones. If you post some pictures of it your blog I’d be happy to link to it. Totally forgot about the stackable segments! I’ll give some pictures on this post showing that feature. Thanks for the comment man.
@Jimmie Thanks for sharing Mum. You’re right, it is pretty similar to wine capping. I actually made wine a while ago and bought an Italian floor corker which has a bottle capping attachment. Haven’t mine wine in a while and the thing is so huge that it’s in storage right now at the folks place.
@Brian I make it tempting don’t I? heh. I think you’re going to have to learn how to brew out of necessity. No access to good beer is a damn good reason and can be used as a plea to the lady for equipment ; )
im a wine maker just starting in to beer brewing. Saw you on homebrewtalk.com and found your website from there. Ive used both of these for quite some time and agree that they make the process much better. Im going to be kegging, but plan on keeping a few bottles from each batch.
I have such a limited budget (I have five kids) so while I’ve passed these gadgets at my LHBS and desired them, I’ve never spent the cash, as I’ve wanted to save the money for ingredients or other equipment. I store my bottles in boxes in the basement (they are rinsed clean of residual beer before they go in the boxes) and I run them through the high temp sanitizing setting on my dishwasher about 2 hours before bottling. I’ve never had any flaws or adverse flavors.
you have a very nice and informative blog over here, Billy.
.-= nate´s last blog ..Limited Time Offer! Overrated beers by Billy Broas =-.
@Adam Hey Adam appreciate you coming to the blog. Love HomebrewTalk. I’m with you on kegging. It is easier but when you need to bottle tools like these do make the process better.
@Nate Thanks for the kind words Nate. You raise a good point. As a homebrewer you really have to pick and choose what you’re going to spend your money on since there are so many gadgets out there. I chose these because bottling is an area where I really wanted to improve things. On the other end, I doubt I’ll ever upgrade my gravity based system by buying pumps and things like that. There’s more important things.
Dude Great Post! I would have never heard of the Bottle washer… Thanks
Hi Billy,
Quick question. I’m about to buy a bottle tree (already have my Vinator), and I’m wondering, Should I somehow sanitize the tree itself before putting sanitized bottles on it? Maybe spray it with sanitizer first or something? Do you do anything to this effect?
Cheers.
@Nigel I don’t do it because when I put a bottle on the tree there is always a small bit of sanitizer that rushes out and soaks the “branch”. When you’re done filling the tree it will be covered in sanitizer. Just make sure it’s clean of any dust and debris and you’ll be good to go. Hope you stop in and let us know how it works out for you!
I’m wondering, will the Vinator still work if I am using an iodine-based sanitizer? They usually recommend that I let things soak for a few minutes, but when you use the Vinator it looks more like a couple of seconds. I guess this is good enough for Star-San, but for Iodophor?
@Nels It will work. I’ve used iodophor with the Vinator with no problems. What the manufacturers recommend is really contact time, not necessarily soaking with the bottle full of sanitizer. So as long as the inside of the bottle is wet for a couple minutes you’re good. This also speeds things up massively.
I just bottled the day before xmas, and would you know, got a bottle tree the next day… And I asked for the bottle rinser and the guy at the store gave her a sanitizing product instead (I asked for a bottle sanitizer, oops!) I will have to pick one of those up next time I’m at the store! Can’t wait to try them out!
@Roscoe That’s funny about the sanitizer. It’s a good idea for a stocking stuffer actually. At least you’ll use it!
I got some Christmas money and I bought both the bottle tree and the Vinator! Can’t wait. This should improve what is, unfortunately, the worst part about home-brewing!
@Nels Hey that’s awesome. It will make your bottling day much more tolerable. Let me know how it goes!
Thanks for the video; I’m new to the home brew world; I’ve got the first two batches bottled (and the third I brewed today), and I must saw that the cleaning and sanitizing of bottles is by far my least favorite part of the job. You’ve convinced me to invest in these two things. I think I’ll get the jet-powered bottle cleaner, too. That’ll save a bunch of time, too.
Thanks!
Bryan
Hey Bryan, welcome to the homebrew world. You won’t regret buying these. I’ve bought a lot of gadgets over the years but these are near the top in terms of ROI. Thanks for the checking out the blog, and also check out TheHomebrewAcademy.com blog where I do most of my homebrewing posts now.
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