A Better Bottle Holder

Located in Cedar Grove, NC, Botanist & Barrel is the South’s only natural cidery. Botanist & Barrel crafts real Southern ciders, fruited sours, and wines. Ciders are crafted with local, sustainable, and organic fruits, including blueberries, traditional Southern heirloom cider apples, and more, from their organic estate farm.

Staff from the First-Year Design team met with Botanist & Barrel staff to discuss possible project ideas and ways that EGR 101 teams could help their organization. Immediately, the disgorging process was mentioned.

Disgorging Process and Current Solution

Disgorging is the process to remove yeast used in secondary fermentation so that the end product is not cloudy. Bottles are placed neck down in a bin containing dry ice. The bottles are currently held in place with a box with multiple holes cut into it. The bottles are not securely held and may tilt or topple. After chilling in the dry ice, the bottle cap is removed manually with a bottle opening – allowing the yeast and a bit of cider to explode out. The operator aims the bottle into a garbage bin to attempt contain the mess of yeast and cider. The bottles are then topped off with more cider and re-capped.

Currently, the Botanist & Barrel staff use a homemade bottle holder. It is ineffective and does not hold the bottles tightly, creating an increased risk for the bottles to break. In addition, the place crate being used bows under the weight of the bottles throughout the day and the bottom of the container tends to freeze to the table. 

The goal of this project was to design and create an object to hold multiple bottles (minimum of 6) straight and still during the necessary step of the disgorging process. Given how frequently the process is done, and the lengthy duration, the object must be highly durable. It must also be able to hold differently sized bottles.

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Impact on Students

Derek Zhang, Signe Marthinsson, Melosa Rao, and Mohammed Farah worked together on this project. As first-year students in Pratt Engineering, the project had an early impact on their development as Engineers.

Mohammed Farah, “It’s really nice to make something that helps other people. We were able to finish our project and deliver it to our client…to get an email months later from the client with pictures of our project being used was really cool”.

Signe Marthinsson, said, “I got great insight as to how much thought and planning goes into the engineering design process”. Signe also knows the impact of others, “the resources here are great, and the professors want to see you succeed. Embrace the struggle, it will work out in the end”.

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