REVIEW: *allinonewinepump*

[cmudavid]

Here is a direct link to my product on my website -

http://www.allinonewinepump.com/product/wine-splash-racking-cane/

If you have any questions you can always email me and I will call you or email you all the answers to all your concerns or questions.

Does that one include the modifications for increased degassing? Similar to how others referenced pinching the tube?

 

[vacuumpumpman]

Does that one include the modifications for increased degassing? Similar to how others referenced pinching the tube?

Yes it does increase the degassing method - every time you do a transfer.
you remove CO2 -

There is no reason do any pinch method if you start with the allinonewinepump from the start.

Please Email me as I will call you and talk to you personally -

[email protected]

 

[AZMDTed]

I want to add my thanks to Steve for such a great product. Well worth the fair price. Here is a cart I made for my wine making. It works extremely well with the allinone pump as I never need to lift any full carboys. There is enough room on the lower deck for my carboys with a racking cane if I pull the carboy towards the front edge. Being that the surface is melamine it moves easily. I can rack the wine up or down and it doesn't matter.

The cart is 21x45 inches and made front just a couple of studs, two 1x pine boards and two melamine 2'x4' boards. All that for about $50, and then wheels rated for 125 pounds each add another $20. Only about 2-3 hour of work and you're ready to go.

 

[vacuumpumpman]

I want to add my thanks to Steve for such a great product. Well worth the fair price. Here is a cart I made for my wine making. It works extremely well with the allinone pump as I never need to lift any full carboys. There is enough room on the lower deck for my carboys with a racking cane if I pull the carboy towards the front edge. Being that the surface is melamine it moves easily. I can rack the wine up or down and it doesn't matter.

The cart is 21x45 inches and made front just a couple of studs, two 1x pine boards and two melamine 2'x4' boards. All that for about $50, and then wheels rated for 125 pounds each add another $20. Only about 2-3 hour of work and you're ready to go.

Ted
I was so impressed with your design - I posted it on my website to show others. I really like all the functionality it has -

Small and rolls around
You can bottle using the same cart
Same height as a counter top - if you had to move a carboy
Enough room to place an empty carboy and transfer with the Allinonewinepump - easily
cleanable and nice looking

I believe my wife is going to tell me that we need something like this

 

[dsm1212]

I want to add my thanks to Steve for such a great product. Well worth the fair price. Here is a cart I made for my wine making. It works extremely well with the allinone pump as I never need to lift any full carboys. There is enough room on the lower deck for my carboys with a racking cane if I pull the carboy towards the front edge. Being that the surface is melamine it moves easily. I can rack the wine up or down and it doesn't matter.

The cart is 21x45 inches and made front just a couple of studs, two 1x pine boards and two melamine 2'x4' boards. All that for about $50, and then wheels rated for 125 pounds each add another $20. Only about 2-3 hour of work and you're ready to go.

Nice. Would you mind posting a side photo and a shot underneath the melamine? I'd just like to see the rest of the frame . thx

 

[vacuumpumpman]

@dsm1212

I am in the process of posting this on my website of exact materials and a how to instructions for this nice work of art -

It will be either posted here or on my website in the next couple of days

Here is a pic of the underneath side -

 

[vacuumpumpman]

I would like to thank Ted for making a very detailed guide on how he built his rolling cart ! He even gave pictures and a complete blueprint or diagram as well.

It was much too large to be posted on this post - so I uploaded to my blog on my website

http://www.allinonewinepump.com/blog/great-roll-around-cart-plans/


Please make sure to give thanks to AZMDTed one of our own winemakingtalk members.

 

[AZMDTed]

Thanks Steve,

I hope you and others find it useful. It does help de-clutter my wine making area and makes it all look much nicer. At some point I will also add some storage baskets on the sides to hold the kit materials or anything else I need. I hope the instructions are clear enough.

Ted

 

[CGish]

I ordered an AllInOneWinePump from Steve last Monday - 9/14/15 - and it arrived on Friday - 9/18/15. I ordered the beer bottling attachment and three AIO Headspace Eliminators in addition to the Deluxe Pump Package. The only thing I would add if I were ordering again is several more HeadSpace Eliminators. Turns out three is not enough.

Initial thoughts on arrival:

The shipping box came nicely packed and arrived safely via UPS. My initial impression upon opening the box was "wow, that is a lot of parts and hoses". However, about five minutes with the instructions and I had a basic idea where everything went. The wooden box that holds the pump is solid with no loose parts or sharp edges. The painted decal on the front is a nice touch. There seems to be a pattern in today's manufacturing to continue adding features until the product doesn't do anything very well. The AllInOneWinePump does not suffer from this malady. Every part has a place and there are no extra switches, bells, or whistles to confuse the customer. From my perspective, this is a very positive thing.

Overall initial impression: Very Good.
​

First use:

My weekend was busy, so it was Monday until I got to use my new toy. I had 6 gallons of Winexpert Chocolate Raspberry Port and 13 gallons of Dragon Blood to rack. I started by moving some OxiClean around to clean my carboys and get a feel for the pump. Hooking up the hoses was simple and easy since all of the connections are color coded. I moved five gallons of Oxiclean three times (into three carboys) and then gravity fed the Oxiclean back to the cleaning bucket to make sure my autosiphon was good and clean.

Here is a picture of that activity in progress:


After getting acquainted with the basic functions of racking, I started moving wine around. The splash racking device worked very well for degassing the wine, but I ran into a problem with two of my carboys. I noticed that the bung on the splash racking assembly seemed a little small, but I figured it was deliberate so I kept going. Pretty soon I heard a loud pop and hiss as the bung got sucked down into the carboy. With a little effort, I pulled it out and finished my racking by holding onto the splash racking assembly so it could not be sucked down into the carboy. When I went to the next carboy, the bung fit perfectly - there was no chance it would suck through the opening. That made me curious, so I took a good look at my carboys. Turns out I have three made in Mexico and one made in Italy. The opening on the Italian one is just slightly smaller than the openings on the Mexican ones. All told, I racked the Port once and the Dragon Blood twice (to be sure it was degassed).

Here is my 20 gallon Brute in my fermentation chamber:


The ability to move 110 lbs of wine out of the fermentation chamber without lifting it all at once is invaluable. Now, if I just build myself one of Tom's carts I will really be set!

19 gallons of racked wine:

​

Bottling Beer:

On Tuesday, I used the beer bottling attachment to bottle 5 gallons of Chocolate Porter.

All Set Up to Bottle:


Nothing makes bottling fun, but this is a lot easier than lifting 5-7 gallons up to waist level or higher so the bottling bucket is above the bottles. With two people the AllInOneWinePump would make bottling fast and simple. It makes it tolerable for one person by eliminating a lot of the repeated moves and heavy lifting. I cleaned and sanitized the overflow bottle, planning on drinking any spillovers. As it turned out, it was a good thing I had a hydrometer sample because I only had a finger's width of spill over from filling 52 bottles:



Incidentally, most of that spillover was foam, since the CO2 in beer makes more foam under vacuum than a still wine does. Overall, I am very happy with this portion of the AllInOneWinePump.
​

Customer Service:

As many people have reported, Steve's customer service and response times are legendary. I have sent him one email through his website and one PM through WineMakingTalk. Both were late in the evening (after nine P.M.). In both cases, Steve responded with a phone call in less than half an hour. The first time we talked, we got disconnected and Steve called me back. That kind of customer service is rare.

I sent the second message after I had the trouble I mentioned earlier with the small bung on the splash racking assembly. Steve called within a half hour - at about 10:30 at night - to fix the issue. It turns out that I am not the only one with multiple sized openings on various carboys. Since people use everything from one gallon to 6.5 gallon carboys and even ones of the same size may have different openings, Steve sends one #6.5 bung and one #7 bung for racking. My #7 was on my racking cane, so it was a simple fix to move the #7 to the splash racking assembly and store the #6.5 with the racking cane. Steve told me that the #6.5 is for smaller carboys and smaller openings. It seemed obvious after he pointed it out, and my racking would have gone smoother if I had stopped and asked a few questions when I ran into trouble. The answers were all there, I just had to ask.

Overall customer service experience: Excellent.​

Final Thoughts: [TL : DR]

Like others have noted, the AllInOneWinePump is a good product. The pump is simple and solid. The extras - beer bottling attachment and AIO Headspace Eliminators - add value to an already quality product. Steve's customer service is excellent. The purchase of an AllInOneWinePump is highly recommended.​

Cody

 

[Mjbailey226]

Great Product

Hi All- I just wanted to take a minute and thank Steve for making a fantastic product. I have had my all in one wine pump for about 5 years and it works just as well today as it did when I first purchased it. I have literally racked and bottled hundreds of gallons of wine with it. Recently, I had a question about the pump, and Steve responded almost immediately with a reply to my email and followed up with a phone call the next day. Try to get that customer service anywhere else! After speaking with Steve, I learned that I have one of the original 50 pumps that he made. I highly recommend the all in one wine pump for anyone looking to bottle a little wine or a whole lot of wine. Thanks, Steve.

 

[jrm1443]

I have had he AIO for about two months now and have used it to rack wine four or five times. I am amazed at how easy it is and the best part is I no longer have to sit for long periods of time over a bucket or a carboy with a drill trying to get all the CO2 out. Just a flick of the switch and the wine is moving into a clean carboy without any concerns of exposure to oxygen or stirring oxygen into the wine.

I also make beer and had an opportunity to try the AIO for bottling my beer. I had been using a bottling wand. It always seemed like no matter how careful I tried to be, I always overfilled some of the bottles and would lose some of my beer. I tried the AIO and it was easier than I expected. The key is to follow the instructions which tell you to keep the carboy lower than the bottles. I quickly filled 48 bottles with NO spillage. I probably netted an extra one to two bottles using the AIO. And they were all to a uniform height due to the filling nozzle design. I can’t wait to bottle wine with the AIO, it doesn’t n get any easier.

Steve is great to deal with. If you send him an e-mail, be prepared for a phone call. He wants to make sure that anyone who has an AIO pump is completely satisfied and uses it to its fullest potential. I wish I had bought one of these when I first started making wine. I recently bought the filter kit for it and am looking forward to filtering my wine before bottling. I will send an update afterward. One tip, order more than one head space eliminator. The AIO makes the process so much easier I now have several carboys going at the same time and the headspace eliminator is a wonderful device that eliminates the need to top off a carboy with water, wine or anything else.

 

[vacuumpumpman]

Hi All- I just wanted to take a minute and thank Steve for making a fantastic product. I have had my all in one wine pump for about 5 years and it works just as well today as it did when I first purchased it. I have literally racked and bottled hundreds of gallons of wine with it. Recently, I had a question about the pump, and Steve responded almost immediately with a reply to my email and followed up with a phone call the next day. Try to get that customer service anywhere else! After speaking with Steve, I learned that I have one of the original 50 pumps that he made. I highly recommend the all in one wine pump for anyone looking to bottle a little wine or a whole lot of wine. Thanks, Steve.

Thanks @ Mjbailey226
I commented toward you that you must have the original 50 pumps sold for the following reasons :

I realized like dangerDaves (the original poster of this review ) machine it is made from real wood and painted with several coats of White paint. The new and improved is made from plastic composite so it is easier to clean and no painting required.

Next is the updated carboy cap - which did not make a proper seal on all carboys - So I decided to make all my bungs to fit any size carboy you may have - or barrels.

Next is the stainless steel spring to extended the life of the vacuum relief valve.

Other than that everything else remains the same except my newer designs like the following :

splash racking cane
headspace elimator
Pressurized Bottle Washer / Sanitizer
beer bottle filler

I am glad that you are happy with your purchase 5 + years ago and still use it today -

I designed it to last - and apparently with all the other reviews it has been proven to last over the test of time.

 

[wm36]

When we first started making wine about 5 years ago, we would make about 5 gallons and bottle it with a bottling wand and gravity siphon on the open door of the dishwasher. It was doable. Each year we have increased how much we make. Fast forward to this year. Earlier this week I needed to clear out some carboy space for what was coming out of primary fermenters, so we did a marathon bottling night finishing 100 bottles in about 2 hours. My wife does the bottling with the AIO and I insert the corks, refill the bottle tree, and move the heavy stuff around. I can't imagine doing this with the bottling wand. The all in one is a very handy part of our operation.

 

[gcsherwood]

new toys for my all in one

I have been using the AIO both here and in Ireland for the past year (I've posted before in this thread about). I love it. Maybe someday I'll get the whole house filter to work without leaking air, but I'm doing fine without it.

I recently got two toys to help me out when racking/degassing. The first is almost trivial -- and perhaps most have already done something similar. I bought a rubber carboy cap with a single hole made for an airlock. The hole in the center holds a racking cane firmly, yet it is easy to slide it up and down the cane when you want to. I cut another hole in the top of the cap (rather ragged, but it doesn't matter) for air intake. When I place the cap on the source carboy, the cane is in the source carboy with the intake just above the gunk at the bottom. Actually the weight of the hose coupled with the flexibility of the cap means that the intake is actually tipped up until it is maybe an inch higher and pressed against the far side of the carboy. Regardless, I don't have to hold the cane while racking! And when the liquid level has fallen to within a couple inches of the bottom, it is a simple matter to tip the carboy onto its edge and move the cane to get every little bit I can before the cloud of precipitate reaches the intake. I don't think the other style of carboy caps (plastic, with two longer projections out the top) would have this flexibilty, but I've never tried.

The second is one that I suspect that Steve would prefer I not mention. It has been so great for me that I'm going to do it anyway. It is probably a terrible idea and no right thinking person should do it (after all I can't even get the filter to work right!). Hopefully that is enough disclaimers. If you try it anyway and things go horribly wrong don't blame Steve! But I love it so here it is: I installed a valve about six inches from where the hose attaches to the destination cane (well right now I'm using the CO2 splash cane Steve sells for all my racking, but that will change, as I'll explain).

I bought the valve from usplastic.com, item 62282. This is a Parker Par-Barb 3/8"x3/8" polypropylene ball valve and it fits perfectly in the racking hose that comes with the AIO. They were about $6.60 each when I bought them (I'll take one to Ireland with me, so I got two) but at $9.60 they really clip you on S/H. Still worth every penny to me. Why? I only do kit wine making and don't rack many times. In the past I've written here that I crimped the hose with my hand to increase the vacuum, and would regulate that by varying the crimp to maintain a stream of foam coming out of the splash cane. I wanted the maximum flow I could get while still maintaining the foam. This was tiring, and at times I needed more hands than I was born with (especially when I was having to hold the source cane as well).

Using the valve instead of crimping is *fantastic*. I have very precise control over the amount of flow/foam and I can tweak the flow until it is just where I want it. Then I can just sit back and watch it happen. The carboy cap keeps the intake out of the precipitate, and the valve keeps the flow where I want it. As the destination carboy fills, I find I can slowly increase the flow while maintaining the foam. The valve makes this trivial to do.

When the liquid level gets close the intake, I use the valve to decrease the flow so the current at the intake doesn't suck in more gunk than necessary. Finally, when I'm just at the last bit and I want to quit, a quick push with my thumb closes the valve totally and instantly stops the flow. I kill the pump right after that, of course, but I stop the flow exactly when I want without sucking a bunch of air though the wine in the destination carboy. I think this would be a bigger deal with a regular cane rather than the splash cane because the output will be at the bottom of the carboy. I can then release the vacuum with the standard vacuum release button without affecting the wine.

I mentioned above that I will stop using the splash cane for all my rackings --- I'll only use it for the first one. Why? Because after the first racking I have virtually no CO2 left in the wine. I also use Steve's headspace eliminaters, and they hold vacuum for at least a week after one racking -- and on a second racking no matter how much I restrict the flow I get no foam at all. On subsequent racks I'm going back to a standard cane for the destination to limit the amount of splashing as the carboy will fill from the bottom. The pump may have really reduced the amount of air in the carboy, but it certainly didn't get rid of all of it. I'm not worried the first time around because of all of the CO2 outgassing will displace the oxygen, but there is no CO2 in the subsequent rackings. I don't know it makes any difference, but why expose the wine to any more air than necessary?

Hope somebody found it interesting.

 

[wm36]

I like the idea of that valve. I may try one, but for slightly different reasons. When racking low to high I always lose about 2 inches in the destination before I can break the siphon. Going high to low I sometimes overflow if I don't anticipate the shutoff soon enough. This valve would help with both situations. Thanks for the idea.

 

[vacuumpumpman]

@ gcsherwood

I am happy that you like your pump - The Allinonewinepump is designed to gradually take out the CO2 in approx 3 normal rackings, without doing an additional CO2 removal process to aid in degassing and clearing of your wines.

I did have a chance to look over the valve you are using - it has an inside diameter of .19'' and the standard hose has a inside diameter of .3125".

So just using the inline valve will restrict the the volume and cause the pump to work alot harder than originally designed for. You can see the reviews that the original pumps are still out there working today - like Danger Dave’s and alot of other people because they did not alter it. You noticed that I did not even mention about restricting the valve - which will even be worse.

An inline valve also has a lot of places for bacteria to form if not properly sanitized!


The splash racking cane works very well - you can transfer from the primary to the secondary and you have no more than 2 more transfers to remove most if not all your CO2. This is best because you are also clearing your wine at the same time.

 

[gcsherwood]

Well, the inside diameter of the valve is the same inside diameter as a racking cane (at least as near as my eyeballs can tell holding them side-by-side and looking down their bores) so I don't see having the valve inline would cause any issue that the racking cane already doesn't.

Obviously things change when I partially close the valve. If I close it just a smidgeon I think I mimic the effect of the "attachment to the splash racking cane" (quoting Steve's words) he mentions earlier in the thread (#733). When I close it a bit more so I get foam, obviously I'm just doing the same as crimping the hose. Is this harmful to the pump? I don't know. I haven't gone inside the box to see what pump is actually in there so I don't know its specs.

One key to this, I think, is the sound of the pump. When it is having to work harder (the worst case for it is drawing a vacuum on the carboy for the headspace eliminator) the pitch rises significantly. When I am at the maximum-flow-with-foam setting on the valve there is only a slight change in pitch. Obviously I'm hopeful that I'm not causing untoward wear on the pump, but only time will tell.

I did put a whole lot of disclaimers in the post where I described it.....

 

[shdixon]

Have More Fun And Get More Done With AIO

We've got it all. Wine making is truly an addiction and ALL the AllInOne products make it so much more fun. I don't lift carboys anymore. I don't spill wine when filling bottles. The Head Space Eliminators let me know that there is a slight vacuum on the carboy creating a CO2 layer on top of the wine protecting it from oxygen. Washing bottles and carboys is SO much easier. Everything is faster. We did our first two kits in February the "old" way. Since we got the AIO products we have done 7 more kits with three more on the way. Thanks Steve for your great products! Ladies and gentlemen these tools are the real deal.

 

[cmason1957]

I have owned my All-In-One Pump for about three years now. It still works just as well as the day I bught it, but I finally got around to bottling with it. In the past my wife has been around to help with the bottling, we use a Ferrari bottling attachment, which works great, start a sucution, it shuts off when the bottle is full. But since I was alone, I decided to give it a try. I believe next time my wife and I are together to bottle we will use the all-in-one. It went very well and was such a breeze to use. I only regret that I didn't try it sooner. Next time I will have a better light and probably a better way to contain the bottles, but with trying comes knowledge. I suppose I could have read the directions, but we all know that isn't going to happen.

 

[Steve_M]

Bought the AIO several months ago, used it when I bottled my LE Triumph.
At the time had only used the Ferrari wine filler on a couple carboys.
Needless to say was very happy with how quick, clean and efficient the AIO performed.
This past Saturday, we racked 6 carboys using the AIO. Now my partner in wine had no idea that I purchased it nor did he ever hear of something like this.
On proceeding with the first carboy all he could say was "wow" this is so much better than last time! I think what he and I were most impressed about was two things;
How much wine we were able to transfer over leaving an absolute minimum of wine and sediment behind. This compared to our last year when we lost a lot due to inexperience.
Second as the receiving carboy was nearing capacity you witness the CO2 just bubbling out of solution. We were tempted to rack wine a couple more times to clear CO2 but just did not have enough time on hand.
Let him know that we will be using this to bottle as well again "wow" as he grinned.

Thanks,

Steve_M