homemade bottle tree

I've got some oak dowels and an oak 2x2 and am going to make a bottle tree. I would buy one of those red plastic ones but theres something about making my own stuff that interests me (much like making my own beer). Anyways, I've heard the scoop about how the wood could gather bacteria and infect the beer, whereas others have said that it doesn't matter. Well, just to be safe I am wanting to spray the wood with high gloss polyurethane. Good idea, bad idea...will it work well?

Well...

Wood gathering bacteria sounds like nonsense to me, if you let the rack dry out between sessions.

And anyway, you're going to sanitize the bottles before bottling, right? I wouldn't worry about it. Good luck with your project.

Powchekny,

The point of a bottle tree is to invert bottles after they've been sanitized so they can drip-dry. Further, coolebeerluke's worry is far from "nonsense". Wood gathers microbes, and it doesn't matter how much you dry it. Just ask the next Brettanomyces-infected barrel you see! Belgian brewers and many American microbrewers rely on infected wood to inoculate fresh wort with interesting microflora.

Coolbeerluke, I advise you to buy the bottle tree. No matter how you soak the wood in polyurethane or spar varnish or whatever, I'd worry incessantly. The plastic tree is far, far simpler to sanitize.

If you insist on making something out of wood for bottle-drying, you can make one out of a plank and a couple of supports. Essentially, you're making something that looks like a short bench with holes drilled in it. You want to drill holes large enough to admit the mouth of the bottle and stop at the shoulder, so you want legs tall enough to keep the mouths off the surface of the counter.

Or you could just use the dishwasher!

Cheers,

Bob

A wood rack wouldn't be a good idea. Not sure if you're talking red oak or white oak, but red oak especially would be a poor choice, as it is ring porous (have you ever seen a red oak cutting board?) Also, polyurethane will break down fairly quickly with the liquid contact.

If you decide to make one anyway, a flat plank like BobNQ3X suggested would be the better option, and I would recommend painting it with a high gloss, exterior grade paint.

All of this would be solved quicker and easier and cheaper if you have a dishwasher.... just use the rack.

joe6pack said:

A wood rack wouldn't be a good idea. Not sure if you're talking red oak or white oak, but red oak especially would be a poor choice, as it is ring porous (have you ever seen a red oak cutting board?) Also, polyurethane will break down fairly quickly with the liquid contact.

If you decide to make one anyway, a flat plank like BobNQ3X suggested would be the better option, and I would recommend painting it with a high gloss, exterior grade paint.

All of this would be solved quicker and easier and cheaper if you have a dishwasher.... just use the rack.

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Yeah, I wasn't sure about the solubility of lacquer or polyurethane...but how about an epoxy based spray paint, like appliance paint, where it dries hard and is water resilient?

Any water resistant gloss paint that will stick to wood would yield the same results. I still wouldn't stick a wood dowel into a bottle that I was about to fill with beer though. Again, especially if its red oak b/c the paint will still leave little bacteria hotels everywhere when it dries into the pores on the wood.

I think the flat board with holes drilled in it would be the best option if you are determined to use wood. (And I would still paint that.)

if you're dead set on building one, you could shop at US lastics.com and just make one out of polycarb.

Or you could just start kegging...

B

if only i could keg (too expensive for now), but I think i might just go with a plastic bottle tree.

You should build a mash paddle.

carnevoodoo said:

You should build a mash paddle.

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Now You're talking. Custom HBT approved....sell'em and make a small profit till you can afford to keg!

I made my own bottle drying rack. Made it out of bread crates. If anyone's interested, i can post pics.... Best price, FREE...:rockin: Holds about 56 regular 12OZ bottles..

^ I'm here for pics.

lets see the pics

I use a bunch of wooden dowel display plate holders I snagged from a closing cooking supply shop...they're two rows of dowels on two parralel pieces of one bye...I spray them down with sanitzer, before putting the bottles on them after I rinse the bottles out with my jet washer....and then that last thing the bottles are getting are blasted with a vineator full of sanitizer at bottling time anyway, and the bottles aren't going to touch the wood or anything after getting sanitized (they go into bottling boxes and are getting filled...

So contrary to the rest of you, I'm not too worried....If the bottles are clean when they touch the wood...AND you make sure the wood is cleaned and sanitized...AND you sanitize the bottles after....if the dowels are a tight grained wood...you should be ok...if you are really worried, sealing them in poly or even dipping them in liquid rubber coating would add an extra layer of protection...but the biggest thing is making sure everything is sanitized....especially AFTER they touch the wood, and before the beer touches it.


(Remember you should NEVER let your sanitized bottles or anything sanitized with no rinse sanitizers dry out...they are wet contact sanitizers...if they dry, the germs don't die when they touch the surface.....so you should be storing dry sanitized bottles on a tree anyway.)

Well hopefully these pics work....first time posting pics on this site.

First pic..shows the bread crate, with foldable handles..


Second pic..shows the modified on the left side, to open up the holes so the neck of the bottles fit in, i used wire cutters to cut the slats...on the right is the unmodified..


Third pic...turn crate upside down, and enjoy your homemade bottle drying rack.

Jmac00 said:

Well hopefully these pics work....first time posting pics on this site. [/IMG]

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Niiiice!!!!

Jmac00 said:

Third pic...turn crate upside down, and enjoy your homemade bottle drying rack.

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Way Cool, now to find a bread truck.

Using wood is perfectly safe, especially with a good sealant. varnish, lacquer, shellac, and boiled linseed oil are all rated as food grade safe once they are cured at least 7 days. They're used on cutting boards, children's toys (not Chinese ) and as confectioner's glaze. In fact, shellac is the same material that's put onto the shells of M&Ms to make em shiny. It comes from the lac beetle.

Or opt for the special at Williams:

45 BOTTLE TREE WITH HANDLE @ Williams Brewing

I vote for the bread rack. Nothing touches the inside of the bottle.

Here's what I use. Drilled holes in scrap wood. It's elevated off the ground with the same bolts I use to suspend my hop bag over the boil.

iamjonsharp said:

Here's what I use. Drilled holes in scrap wood. It's elevated off the ground with the same bolts I use to suspend my hop bag over the boil.

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nice! I might just end up doing something like that. The bread crate is cool but I doubt I'll come across one of those sometime soon. It sucks being a poor homebrewer...I'll drink one for the day I buy a keg!

What size holes did you cut?

StevieG said:

What size holes did you cut?

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About an inch and a half diameter. The holes are big enough so that the outside neck of the bottle rests on the wood, like this:

Works with all size bottles from 187ml mini bottles to 750ml bottles, and everything in between.

That is a great idea... I think I have scrap wood at home. Thanks for the inspiration!

StevieG said:

That is a great idea... I think I have scrap wood at home. Thanks for the inspiration!

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Anytime!

Very nice! I'll definitely remember that in case my new place is sans dishwasher.

I've seen pics of a different sort of bottle tree at another brewing site (not as good as this one..). Basically it's similar to a standard plastic tree, but the center post is a square stick, but instead of dowels stuck into them, the person screwed Stainless Steel eye hooks. If they are screwed into the post nice and tight, it basically gives the standard bottle tree, but instead of the dowel going into the bottle to support it, the bottle neck slips inside the stainless steel eye, upside down of course, and keeps anything from contacting the inside of the bottle. Plus it's SS, so it cleans easily, and the post and base can be made of wood and then sealed with your choice of topcoat. I'll try to find pics.

The cost wasn't that much, surprisingly, if you shop around you should be able to find everything for under $10 they said.

That sounds pretty cool actually. I can visualize it but, depending on how many bottles it could support) I can't see how it would be under $10, if it is then I'm game. I need something that can hold at least 48 bottles, and the less space it takes up, the better.

I am making a bottle tree out of wood this weekend, my step dad had a full blown wood shop in his basement.

we are just going to use dowels and turn a 4x4 on the lathe to make it round
going to make it hold 40 of my 500mL bottles

Hefeweizengeliebter said:

I am making a bottle tree out of wood this weekend, my step dad had a full blown wood shop in his basement.

we are just going to use dowels and turn a 4x4 on the lathe to make it round
going to make it hold 40 of my 500mL bottles

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I think the risk of bacteria hiding in porous wood is overstated. I clipped the following from a website for wooden cutting boards, but I've read similar comments elsewhere:

The myth is that wooden boards are so porous that harmful organisms such as salmonella, e-coli and listeria soak in, are hard to remove, and easily contaminate other foods placed upon it later.

The myth has been compounded with the belief that plastic, because it is not porous, can be more easily and safely cleaned. These beliefs were so widely held by everyone including health officials that no one actually bothered to test them until 1993. Microbiologists at the University of Wisconsin's Food Research Institute contaminated wooden cutting boards and plastic ones with all bacteria that cause food poisoning.... Guess what?

Without washing, without touching it, the bacteria on the wooden board died off in three minutes. On the plastic board? The bacteria remained and actually multiplied overnight. It seems wood has a natural bacteria-killing property, plastic and glass don't."

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Howdy -- noob here, haven't yet brewed. One of the reasons I want to is so I can learn more about (how) my ancestors (managed). I'm talking about German immigrant farm folks in Texas from roughly 1850 to 1950. All my own fifty years I've heard my father tell tales of home brewed beer, wine, and root beer. I could go on, but I believe I've set up my question...

There were no plastic bottle trees back in those days. How'd the rural folks do it?

In fact, shellac is the same material that's put onto the shells of M&Ms to make em shiny. It comes from the lac beetle.
__________________
There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness."

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LOL, dang dude, no kiddin...