Some photo's attached...
It's rough and ready made from wood scraps I had lying around. The stand in the 'down' position. For small bottles I need to place the bottles on a block of wood but for 500ml bottles its fine...
An image of it in the raised position for bottle loading....
Its on short draw ball bearing runners from B&Q.
And a close up of the unit itslelf. Its attached by a couple of large cable U-clamps off eBay...a few quid each.
I bottle from a keg, so have a liquid line from the keg to the RHS port, and the gas line goes to a John Guest Y-connector with one going to the CO2 bottle and one going to the keg.
I can bottle a 19ltr keg by myself in under an hour once you get things set up and get into a flow. I can also use it with PET bottles if I wrap loads of PTFE tape around the tapered silicone bung so it can seal against the wider opening of the PET bottle. The weight of the thing is heavy enough to not need any external pressure to maintain a seal too.
Process is:-
1. Load bottle
2. Turn black valve knob to the left (gas side) to pressurise bottle
3. Turn black knob on the right to release gas to purge bottle for 5 seconds (purges from the bottom up so get perfect purge)
4. turn black valve knob to the right (liquid side) and slowly release the pressure via the black knob to allow beer to flow. I aim for a slow flow to prevent foaming. Have to slow it down to a trickle sometimes as the beer level gets to the neck.
5. Once at the desired level then turn valve knob back to the left hand side gas position to pressurise bottle for a second before moving the valve knob back to the neutral position
6. raise the device up and cap bottle. Usually get a little 'pschhh' and maybe a bit of foam spitting out as the pressure of the bottle equalises, but this is good as it means you're capping on foam.
Its amazing how after a few you just get into a rhythm and it all becomes a mindless mechanical motion.
