Suggestions for air-washing bottles

[Max Action]

We're planning on blasting our bottles with compressed air to clean them of dust before filling. Does anyone sell such an air blaster specifically built for this, or is everyone just using a DIY contraption? If you built your own, care to share some details?

Normally I enjoy inventing my own equipment, but lately I've been finding less and less time for tinkering and wouldn't mind taking advantage of someone else's experience (and/or trial and error).

Thanks!

[Donutboy]

I believe what you are looking for is an 'air sparger' and they are used by a lot of wineries and some breweries - http://www.gwkent.com/manual-gas-sparger-for-bottles.html

We're planning on blasting our bottles with compressed air to clean them of dust before filling. Does anyone sell such an air blaster specifically built for this, or is everyone just using a DIY contraption? If you built your own, care to share some details?

Normally I enjoy inventing my own equipment, but lately I've been finding less and less time for tinkering and wouldn't mind taking advantage of someone else's experience (and/or trial and error).

Thanks!

[Absinthe Pete]

Why air, we use water to thorough rinse a bottle out. Not saying one is better just curious. I kind of like water knowing that I can see it get every crevice.

P.S. The bottle sparger is for wine bottles to purge the oxygen in it to prevent oxidation in wine. Not that it can be used for your purpose too.

[Jedd Haas]

Do you blast it with air after the water, or let it drain? A few ml of water will stay in the bottle, which can throw off your fill and ABV. That's why we use air.

Our rig consists of a foot pedal air switch and a super fine particle filter, along with some tubing and connectors.

[Absinthe Pete]

We compensate for that, but yes we drain it.

[Max Action]

Our rig consists of a foot pedal air switch and a super fine particle filter, along with some tubing and connectors.

Is it designed for a single bottle, that you just hold while it gets blasted? Or do you have something more complicated with stands/brackets for holding multiple bottles? I've watched bottle filling in other distilleries where they just blew out one bottle at a time, and it didn't look very efficient to me when you're doing a lot of bottles.

I'm guessing we'll just build our own, also with a foot-pedal.

[Jedd Haas]

It's hand-held.

[mendodistilling]

You can use a pump that pumps whatever you distilled through the bottle and recover it in a small plumbed sink basin w/ jets. I think gia makes one.

[JohninWV]

I believe trying to calculate how much water you can rinse/dry after a rinse is a poor exercise and not-exact. Due to that, and the tight bottling proof tolerances allowed, we use air. We use a device just like the one linked above, purchased from TCW. It's been a good machine for us.