[High West]

I am looking for a machine that I could use to cork 6 bottles at a time. I was thinking of something where you would hand load the bottles and corks, and then push a button to actuate the machine. Is there anything like that on the market? Has anyone had something custom made? If so, what did it cost?

Thanks!

[Absinthe Pete]

If you're serious, shoot me a PM and we can talk about it. I make custom equipment. Give me some general dimensions such as largest and smallest bottle and cork size and overall width.

[whackfol]

FWIW I am only bottling wine at this time, but I hope by reference this is helpful. Using a manual corker, I can just keep up with my four spout filler and, with three people, bottle about 30 cases per hour. I have looked at the semiautomatic vacuum corkers and they can insert between 500 and 800 corks per hour. While I will probably make the purchase next year, my bottleneck will just shift to my filler. Corkers are extremely fast and IMHO the relationship of one person to a corker is about right. By the time a bottle is set under the corker and you get your hands out of the way and activate, it's time to pull the corked bottle off.

For me, the next step after the semiautomatic corker, is a larger filler and then to go with a mobile bottling line or a small monoblock.