Simple bottle drying rack...

At present we have numerous tubs around the house, tubs with wine at various stages, we also have a load of demi johns full of wine as well, and today I decided that some of that wine was ready for bottling, the problem is it was about 20 litres of wine or more, which is a lot of bottles that needed to be sterilised and dried.

Usually I put the bottles into some of the empty brewing tubs we have, but as they were all full I decided on a different method, that being filling the bath (after a good clean) with hot water and sterilising powder and chucking the bottles in.

This works well, but drying the bottles can be a pain as you need to let them drain and it's not always practical to stand them upside down on a draining board or other surface as they have a tendency to fall over so I made a very simple drying rack.

Here it is -

Not a lot to it really.

At this point you might be thinking it looks like a sheet of plywood with some holes drilled in it, and you'd be right because that's exactly what it is.

Basically what I've done is take a sheet of plywood and drilled holes in it, holes big enough to fit the neck of a wine bottle in so you can stand it upside down over a bath.

To make it I first measured the width of the bath, which as it turns out is about 660mm (about 26 inches in old money) so using that measurement I made it 660mm wide and the same in length, so I ended up with a square 660mm wide by 660mm long.

I measured in 50mm (about 2 inches) on two sides to allow for the sides of the bath.

Then I marked out a grid so that I knew where to drill the holes for the bottle necks, to mark up the grid I took two measurements from the wine bottles we have, the diameter of the neck and the diameter of the base, this as it turned out was about 32mm for the neck and about 80mm for the base.

Measuring in from the marks I'd made to allow for the bath sides I made a mark at 80mm intervals until I reached the end of the wood, then I did the same the other way which gave me a grid of 80mm squares.

Grid marked out - 

Now to work out where to drill.

To mark the drill holes I put marks at 40mm on each line, this gave me a total of 49 holes to drill.

Then using a 35mm forstner bit I set about drilling 49 holes, these holes are where each bottle will sit while the rack sits on the bath, think of it as being like one of those over the bath racks everyone used to have, the wire things that had soap and sponges and all manner of other stuff, I bet your nan had one.

Drilling points marked out - 

On to drilling.

And with it all marked out I then drilled a lot of holes - 

Drilling holes is boring.

And that was about it, I gave the hole thing a sand and it was done, and I have to say it works well, and it saves me having to take up loads of space in the kitchen and the bottles are much more secure now, I may give it a coat of something to protect the wood a bit, and I may add some extra support at some stage, but all in all it was a cheap solution to a problem.

Here it is in use - 

Bottles drip drying.

Works like a charm, and as it's flat it will be easy to store away, shortly after this picture was taken these 26 bottles were filled with wine made from grapes we grew on our allotment plot last year.

Thanks for reading.