Enolmatic or Gravity Fed filler?

[jlevac]

Debating between enolmatic or gravity fed filler? Any thoughts?

thanks

[dwhuff]

We use an enlomatic filler with the filter canister. Have bottle thousands of bottles with it and it has worked perfectly. I use the one bottle filler from St. Pats. They also have the 4 bottle filler but we typically only bottle about 400 to 500 bottles at a time so the one bottle filler works fine for us now. The one bottle filler is $395 if I remember right and the 4 bottle set up is over $2K..

[leftturndistilling]

We used an Enolmatic for the first couple of months and It worked well (except for a leaky filter canister).. I bought 4 replacement heads, a big vacuum pump off ebay, and made a vacuum canister and filter canister basically duplicating the Enolmaster unit ... It Works too fast !!!.. My bottling people can't keep up .... Cant figure out how to post pics or I would ....

[Natrat]

Enolmaster works great. So does gravity. So does Xpressfill. But each have drawbacks.

The biggest advantage to the Enolmaster is the filter cartridges in the bowl, and ability to view the polished product as it goes in. The overflow reservoir can be a pain if you are slow. The Enolmatic has plastic parts that break with rough handling, unlike it's big brother. The gravity fillers are foolproof, but I recommend a polish filter and surge tank, which adds cost, especially if you automate it. You could use a gravity polish filter, but I'm not sure how well it would work, especially for multiple products. But gravity is quiet and as fast as you like. The Xpressfill line works quite well, but again requires a polish filter and surge tank as the pumps in them don't perform well with a static filter. If you are using cheap glass, go for the level filler rather than the volumetric to keep your product looking consistent...or a dark bottle or a full neck wrap :-)

If you plan on having "bottling parties," go Xpressfill or gravity. If you or trained staff is going to be doing the work, splash out for the EnolMaster with the pyrex bowls.

Good Luck!

[Jongood]

dwhuff....

When using the single spout enolmatic filler...how many 750ml bottles can you fill in an hour? Manufacturer states 200/hr...but would love your input.

Thanks

[Dehner Distillery]

we have a couple different fillers. Also we are a dealer for Xpressfill.

1. We have a two head power filler we made. It is an "over flow" filler it will fill 2 750ml bottles in 8 secs.

2. The second filler is a 6 spout gravity filler from Vinters Vault. It has the electronic kit on it so it will pump into the reservoir tank on its own. But what we do is we put a big in-line filter so that all the product coming into the reservoir has been filtered. That 6 spout gravity filler is super fast. The trick is always keep bottles under the heads so it is filling all the time.

We do a lot of bottling, And the gravity filler seems to do the job just fine. It is even easy to switch between products. I do forecast the need for a 12-20 spout in-line filler soon tho.

[rtshfd]

The single spout enolmatic/enolmaster has been wonderful for us. We get through about 500-600 bottles in one 8 hour shift. That's with one person manning the entire bottling line so there's a lot of downtime with the bottler itself while capping/sealing. I intend on upgrading to the 4 spout simply because the single spout was so good. Keep in mind if you use long neck/tall bottles you need the correct attachement which is $100-150 off st.pats.

[John McKee]

We use a 4 head at our smaller distillery and its gone through 200K+ bottles with only normal maintenance and repair, still on the first vacuum pump in fact. We use it for a variety of products, including a cream liqueur.

I agree with the comments above regarding filtering, super handy. We keep individual sets of filters for all of the different product lines. We filter in series, through a 5 and then .5 micron filter pack.

Cheers,

McKee

[dwhuff]

dwhuff....

When using the single spout enolmatic filler...how many 750ml bottles can you fill in an hour? Manufacturer states 200/hr...but would love your input.

Thanks

Sorry I didn't see your post till today. When I bottle by myself I fill about 100 bottles in an hour but that includes me corking, sealing, and casing back up. It will easily do more but I stop to do the other things. With someone doing the sealing we do about 20 cases in 1 1/2 hours. Thats 240 bottles. Could do more but I stop and cork and move over to another table for the seals to be put on. The bottleneck, excuse the pun, which slows the process is not in the filling machine its the rest of the process that most of the time I am doing alone.

[Dehner Distillery]

We go from the holding tank to a small pump to a filter bank to the reservoir on our 6 spout gravity filler. There are sensors on the reservoir itself to turn the pump on and off so it always maintains at least a minimum level. We love it. We can switch between products very easily. We can rock out to about 900-1200 bottles per hour. We easily fill a pallet 12bottles x 75 cases in 45-50min. That is with only 3 people.

I would shoot my self if we filled one bottle at a time.

[Spirited]

I see a lot of folks are using the enolmatic - are you using the standard one or the more robust version I have just been told about that has greater resistance to spirits and comes with a SS filler head. Will be filling about 200l per week once up and running so am keen to know whether the standard one will offer the durability. Cheers

[Rhody-O]

On 6/5/2014 at 5:52 PM, leftturndistilling said:

We used an Enolmatic for the first couple of months and It worked well (except for a leaky filter canister).. I bought 4 replacement heads, a big vacuum pump off ebay, and made a vacuum canister and filter canister basically duplicating the Enolmaster unit ... It Works too fast !!!.. My bottling people can't keep up .... Cant figure out how to post pics or I would ....

I'd love to make our own canister!

[Broken Anvil Distilleries]

We have an enolmaster and after about 8000 bottles, it starts and stops when it wants. Tech support says it's likely the very expensive pump that needs to be replaced. Maybe its us, but we also have very inconsistent fills. I wouldnt do it again; it's a seriously expensive product to start having problems so quickly.

[needmorstuff]

I have been using a single head enolmatic for just over a year. With 2 people it is not the bottleneck for us. It has developed a leak somewhere so i am getting it refurbed.. probably a seal. It has the plastic head.

At first it is a pain in the butt, it takes a lot of practice to fill accurately and foams a lot in the bottle as it approached the fill level, you can reduce the pump speed to reduce this... a lot of manual adjustment is required with the fill if you are wanting consistency. We use a 10ml syringe to manually adjust it. We have gotten used to it and continue to use it. I would love for a solution that fills accurately and consistently, the enolmatic does not.

The SS head whilst being more robust wouldn't fix this i don't think.

It is a workhorse though, we have filled tens of thousands of bottles with it and for the money how much can you really complain.

Steer clear of the tenco filters and housing as they are expensive - use a "standard" 10" inline filter where you can buy cheaper media, maybe 2 inline - 10micron then 1micron depending on the product.