Recommendations for bottle fillers?

[Ben k]

Hey everyone, we will soon open our small-scale distillery and need a bottle filler for our 750 ml liquor bottles. I've been looking over and have been recommended Mori and Pillan-Zambelli 4 spout fillers. The only thing is that they might be overkill for our operation since we won't be bottling more than 200-400 bottles a week and we are tight on space. However, we do have an airline that could drive a pneumatic pump (which I have seen is good for safety).

Just wondering if anyone has thoughts on whether those fillers would be a good pick or if other options would be appropriate. 

Also, would love to hear about your experiences with those fillers or any other ones since we aren't too familiar with the process 😅

Thanks!

 

[MichaelAtTCW]

We sell the Mori Fillers so I'll just comment on the size & other fact-based aspects and leave comments/experiences to other folks. That said, there have been A LOT of threads on fillers over the years. Not much has changed, but there's a wealth of information here in the forum and a lot of ground has been covered! Here's a link to some past threads. Plenty of strong opinions/recommendations about fillers!

For a gravity filler, it's unlikely to get smaller than either of the units you mention. I'm not aware of any 1, 2, or 3-head gravity fillers. Even if there were, gravity fillers need a reservoir that can hold a few bottles' worth of liquid, so there's kind of a minimum cost of entry with regard to size.

There are some other non-gravity types of fillers we don't sell with fewer heads, though: the Enolmatic is a single-head vacuum filler, so it doesn't need a large reservoir above the filling nozzles. It's been mentioned a few times in the linked threads. XpressFill has some smaller 2-spout options as well.

Both of the above use electric pumps, so you would not be able to use your in-house compressed air.

[Tom Allan]

I use a 4 nozzle Cru filler and love it.  I lift my blending tank with a forklift to gravity fill.  Very fast and consistent.

[Golden Beaver Distillery]

XpressFill - small foot print and consistent fill level.

[adamOVD]

Enolmatic if you really want to save space and money. It should fill 400 bottles in a day easily if that's all you're doing.

[Kindred Spirits]

With a 4-Nozzle Enolmatic, we were consistently filling 2000-2500 bottles per day. That is with a good team at distilleries I have help get started and trained.

[Cru Bottling Systems]

Thank you Tom - I'm glad you guys are happy!

-Steve