automated bottling

[poggor]

I have been thinking about how to package large volumes of beer (in bottles- not kegs). I understand that automated bottling/labeling machines are very expensive (does anyone have any specific information on these?).

during the start up phase i was wondering whether any functioning brewery would rent out the use of their bottling/labelling systems? what do people think? alternatively, maybe a consortium to buy a shared machine?

g

 

[Online Brewing Supplies]

You should post your location.

 

[doon]

What kind of volume?

 

[poggor]

like say 500L into stubbies
im in melbourne. but this is hypothetical.

 

[doon]

Not sure how you would transport 500 litres of beer to bottle. If you were to do it at a brewery you would most likely have to contract brew it there as well as bottle.

Is this personal use?

 

[Feldon]

I don't know much about bottling plants, but a quick look on Aliexpress found this low volume pneumatic machine which can be bought and shipped to Aust for under $2,000.



http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/4heads-pneumatic-quantitative-perfume-filling-machinery-stainless-based-automatic-piston-filler-liquids-bottling-equipment/416496_828594400.html

If that's not suitable there would be others in a similar price range or even cheaper.

 

[rehabs_for_quitters]

Be prepared to throw $20k US at it for something decent that does about 400 bottles per hour and manual handling of bottles, the cheapest Chinese counter pressure evac fillers and crowners are around $12k US plus shipping but they are manual capper, I've spent a bit of time lately researching this as I am setting up myself

If your handy have a look at this idea if you can score some cheap pneumatic gear and with arduino to control it could be made pretty reasonably, its what I am thinking about building

 

[poggor]

have you emailed that guy?

 

[Ciderman]

Just for perpective it will cost you about $1.50 per bottle, front and back label attached for a run of 1200 bottles. Triple your volume and you almost half the costs. No idea on filling costs. Probably better off buying the machine if your serious about it. There was one going around here earlier in the year from someone who was selling commercial equipment.

 

[Phoney]

A mate of mine bought a second hand CPBF for $600. He had to fix it up a bit but it works well. It does 16 bottles at a time, it looks kind of like a lazy susan in that you put the bottles down, drop down the filler, cap em, spin it around, swap the bottles, rinse and repeat. This is for a commercial brewery btw.

 

[rehabs_for_quitters]

poggor, on 22 Nov 2014 - 7:36 PM, said:

have you emailed that guy?

Yeah 21k plus shipping but that's Euros what ever the symbol is for that carry on

 

[Phoney]

There's a company in the US that has a mobile cannery in the back of their truck. They hit the road covering thousands of miles driving from microbrewery to microbrewery stopping to fill cans with craft beer as a service.

It would be a great business to get into, but I doubt the market would be big enough in Australia to make it viable.

Here's an article: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/07/22/mobile-craft-beer-cannery/13022115/

 

[Mr. No-Tip]

Bottling aside, even labelling is crazy. ANHC attendees hopefully paid a bit of attention to the Big Bourbon Barrel Barleywine label...

CUB donated the beer as part of their sponsorship but it was unlabelled. We designed and hand labelled it ourselves.

We went through a local label provider, 105x100 were ~$900 per 1000 labels, 105x75 were ~$795 per 1000. We payed a pro rata price to label the ~300 bottles, but effectively the conference paid almost $700 bucks, plus labour, to label those 300 bottles.

We looked into a machine labeller, or even just a roll applicator through the same supplier, but it wasn't viable for us.

 

[mudd]

There's a company in the US that has a mobile cannery in the back of their truck. They hit the road covering thousands of miles driving from microbrewery to microbrewery stopping to fill cans with craft beer as a service.

It would be a great business to get into, but I doubt the market would be big enough in Australia to make it viable.

Here's an article: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/07/22/mobile-craft-beer-cannery/13022115/

Have been thinking for a while if something like this would be viable in Oz.

 

[Burt de Ernie]

Go down the local backpackers and throw a couple hundred bucks at them....They should be able to do it the manual way.