Recirculating AG Setup Repurposed as Bottle Washer?

[black_labb]

I'm thinking of making an attachment to my recirculating brew setup so that I can swap my sparge arm for a set of upward facing nozzles that fit into the neck of a bottle. They would drain back into the "Kettle". This way I can set my pid controller so that the element will keep a sodium percarbonate solution hot and the Kaixin pump sprays into the base of the bottles. I could then use my plastic bottle rinser to simply rinse before filling.

I have a hand pump but it is best suited to the everyday beers and I still bottle a fair bit of beer for the beers that are better aged or with higher carbonation.

Has anyone done or seen something like this? My main concern is getting the right amount of holes of the right size for the bottles without mucking about with too much experimentation. I'm thinking that brazing copper pipe would be the way to go but I'm not sure about how to get small openings to get a squirting output as opposed to flowing. Squashing 12.7mm pipe would probably make it too big to fit into a coopers bottle neck. I don't know if it is easy to get stepdown fittings for smaller pipe. Maybe make friends with a aircon/refrigerant mechanic who has access to small pipe and possibly stepdowns? Does anyone have any bright ideas for something else to use for the piping/squirters?

 

[klangers]

I made my own bottle washer which is simply a series of watering system components arranged in a grid. The risers come out of the main header and the bottles are placed, inverted, on these. The risers have little sprinkler heads on them.

The whole assembly is placed on a trough and my brewing pump circulates the sanitising fluid. This gives me the ability to clean 40 bottles at once so I can load up the bottles and let them clean over a period of time without any intervention.

That said, my pump is a liquid-ring pump and has far more pressure than a typical chugger pump.

I don't see the advantage of copper (in fact sterilisers will corrode it) in this application.

 

[black_labb]

I made my own bottle washer which is simply a series of watering system components arranged in a grid. The risers come out of the main header and the bottles are placed, inverted, on these. The risers have little sprinkler heads on them.

The whole assembly is placed on a trough and my brewing pump circulates the sanitising fluid. This gives me the ability to clean 40 bottles at once so I can load up the bottles and let them clean over a period of time without any intervention.

That said, my pump is a liquid-ring pump and has far more pressure than a typical chugger pump.

I don't see the advantage of copper (in fact sterilisers will corrode it) in this application.

I'll have a look at the water systems to see what could work. Thanks