Bottling time with Blichman beer fun

[CTolino]

Is there anyone out there that can tell me approximately how long it takes them to bottle a case of beer using the blichmann beer gun or a counter pressure filler? We are opening a small brewery in conjunction with our winery, and I'm trying to convince the owner it makes more fiscal sense to purchase a bottle or canning machine as opposed to having us hand bottle 300-500 gallons of beer.

 

[jmitchell3]

I'd guess if you had a few people assisting, it could be ~ 15-20s per bottle give or take.

 

[TexasDroughtBrewery]

Yeah, I have the beer gun its not the easiest thing to learn to use either...it can leave a lot of head until you really figure it out. So the first time you do it it can take a couple of hours going and researching and blah blah...once you figure it out it takes yeah about 20-30 seconds a bottle. I would not by any means do 500 beers with that gun.

 

[blizz81]

Could improve efficiency by making a filler that filled more than one bottle at a time...

 

[CTolino]

Haha yeah I'm not looking forward to doing 500 gallons with one. I'm really pushing for a used canning or bottling line. Blizz81 do know of any plans for a DIY multi head filler?

 

[nettekdl]

I can't remember which episode it was, but on brew strong Jamil talked about the rig he made with 5 beer guns to bottle his sours at heretic. You could shoot him an email and see if he can help

 

[TexasDroughtBrewery]

I mean I understand cutting costs and running on budgets as a small business owner but the amount of labor cost I think would counter balance the cost of getting the bottling machine.

At 500 gallons that is 8,000 beer bottles if it pours perfect (which it wont) say your good at the gun and it takes 30 seconds a bottle that would be 66 or so hours for one person and you haven't cleaned around the bottles or capped them yet. So he is looking at probably 3 days of labor.

 

[TexasDroughtBrewery]

Here this would work.... [ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ikKnYwKtjA[/ame]

 

[SteelManCM]

I want plans for that!

EDIT:
Here's a thread explaining what's used.
http://discussions.probrewer.com/showthread.php?26569-4-head-bottle-filler-for-275

 

[jmitchell3]

I've heard there are mobile bottling lines too, so you can hire the truck to come by and bottle for you

 

[TexasDroughtBrewery]

This was in the comments.

Bottler update:
We are still using the same bottling machine in the video, but I replaced the spring loaded bottoms, with a plain shelf. I can now load two bottles at a time because it only takes one hand to load a bottle.
We have bottled over 50,000 bottles with this bottler so far.
We average 350 bottles per hour. The fastest we have done is 445 bottles in one hour. The machine can go much faster than the capper can cap bottles.
You need to realize, this was our first test with this bottler, done in my driveway.
We bottle 8 barrels at a time, but hope to jump to 15 barrels soon.
We also added another step. we now CO2 purge twice using a purging station.
You can never purge enough. With our new double purge method, we have tried beer over a year old and tasted no oxidation.


Here is the thread he also says he got the instructions from
http://discussions.probrewer.com/showthread.php?26569-4-head-bottle-filler-for-275

 

[CTolino]

Yeah I've heard of the mobile truck too, I just don't think it's that practical for us only having a single brite. We will be serving off of kegs.