The Beer Pedaler: Beer Plumbing

The bottling line at Rahr Brewing is new... and I-talian. It came with a manual, also in I-talian. We've just kinda had to figure it out, as many breweries do.

In the breaking-in period, we have had to make some adjustments and modifications. Being the Master Plumber, I get to do a lot of it. Being an I-talian machine, nothing was standard, so I had to improvise. And since it was custom, I signed it with solder.

Beer is sticky and filling bottles with it makes a mess. We needed to rinse them off as they came out of the capper. Easy business... I just tapped into the water feed that runs across the top of the unit, added a valve, then another tee with a couple of drops which I drilled small holes into and PRESTO! Rinsed bottles.

I didn't love it, but it was functional. A few weeks back, we had an intern at the brewery who suggested using shower heads like he had seen at another brewery. GREAT idea! And very easy to put into place, plus giving me the opportunity to make it look prettier. Sometimes, even if it works fine, if it's ugly I hate it. I have to look at it all the time. So.... about $20 in parts and now we have a much better, more sightly bottle rinser. Next up, air knife to dry them.