BeerBorg

I've been out in Santa's Workshop for days working on my first home brew DIY project.

Introducing The Brewbirds BrewMate 1.0
Three options include: front 12 high pressure washing of taller bottles like Bombers, 1 Litre Pets, Belgians or Wine bottles; a standard 24 bottle option for racing to get that case of 12 ouncers ready for bottling day; and a spray head option for washing the outside of the bottles and cleaning carboys, kegs and fermenters.



For all of you who hate cleaning and bottle washing you may officially hate me now.

That looks excellent!! Would love to see pics and description of the build. Looks like you killed 3+ birds with one stone!

Is that an upside down BD conical stand for the carboy support??

This is awesome. Does it recirculate the water too?

What a crazy bird!

Pretty cool!

@ GWCR yes I grabbed it out of the beer closet, which is right behind this sink, on a whim to take that shot. I don't use the carboy now but when I decided to build this I wanted to build in versatility, I don't have any bombers but that doesn't mean I won't in the future, that is the kind of thing I was thinking early in the planning stage (@ RickBeer the planning stage was staring at a bunch of old PVC I had lying around and scratching my head a lot; I really could have used your smarts on this but I wanted to surprise you ).

@Beer_Lord if I understand your question yes the pump is recirculating the water from the sink back into the (insert what is being washed here) as it/they drain back into the sink.

Here is a pic I took for seeing if I could wash fermenters early in the planning stage.
The idea was to be able to wash any size bottle, the green one is a 3 Litre I got from JoeC when I traded a Tap-A-Draft for my Party Pig ( Boy I sure miss JoeC).
I'll find a good cover for the cycle that washes the outside of the bottles at some point but this is the idea for the outside bottle cycle.
That's the little pump BB2 got me for this project; it was half price on Amazon because the box was messed up, I think it was $30!!! for a pump OMG.

I'll put up a pic of it not in the sink later GWCR I just ran a test with the 1 Liter PETS and they are still in the sink.

OMG!!!!!!!! I so have sink envy. That is an excellent DIY project, well done.

My only reply is WOW nice job.............

*Imitates Eric Cartman*

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

genius!

Brilliant! When is the kickstarter?

Yeah, I'd fund that doo-hicky.

John Sand wrote:Brilliant! When is the kickstarter?

mashani wrote:Yeah, I'd fund that doo-hicky.

LOL if you knew how long this took me and how many trips to the hardware store I made....

The manager of said hardware store is getting a sixer of Brewbirds Ales for all the help he offered I do not take sole credit.

Oh and I called it 1.0 because I forgot a little known law of physics called "the Path of Least Resistance". I have the spray head hooked to the front twelve bottle section so I wasn't getting enough head (that's a pump term folks don't freak out ).

The spray head really needed to be on its own zone so I ended up making some plugs as a work around so I can run the spray cycle.

Here are some pics Glen:

I put a gate valve on the end to be able to control the pressure and to drain it after use.
These are the plugs I made as well as the butterfly collars to hold the bottles upright and stable.
This is the pump rigged for my sink; if you guys build one of these rigs GET A SELF PRIMING PUMP

Okay got an update for those interested in this thing.

First JB Water Weld and copper don't play well together I have no idea why because it says it works for metals among other surfaces. I keep having to add a little more as the copper tubing separates from the set up epoxy dough. I chose it because: it is good to 70 PSI, temps up to 250 F and is actually food grade compliant (no chemical leaching).
I may just have needed to use more than I did, I'll ask my hardware store buddy.

Second a minor nuisance, hopefully fixable, the shut off valves were VERY hard to open and close on today's test run, another question for my guy.

Lastly big upset was that after all the work it took making the butterfly collars to hold the bottles firm and straight it turns out they soften up in warm water so a bunch of the bottles were leaning at all angles. So I have to find something to replace them with.

Everybody feel free to chime in here if you have a comment and ideas are more than welcome (especially if your name is Evily who is an engineer ) Critiques are welcome even though I've already glued the thing together.

Here is a close up of what I used. You can see it on one of the pics above.
As a side bummer I discovered that using the BrewMate was not going to help with my hard water issues so no cheap oxygen cleaner for me.

I am pleased with how it worked, in principle the first washing session did all I was hoping for, it just needs some tweaking which is to be expected.

I personally think it's an awesome idea and I think you did a great job of coming up with the idea and executing on it. Trial and error will get it to where you want it and where it needs to be. Good luck with it and I'll be watching for more updates.