Looking to streamline and improve your barrel filling and emptying process? In this video, Grant Layman from Deutsche Beverage + Process walks through our latest innovations in barrel handling equipment for distilleries, as featured at CBC 2025. We showcase two game-changing systems:
✅ Fill & Draw Barrel System – A fully customizable solution for safe, single-operator top filling and vacuum-powered barrel emptying. Designed for explosion-proof operation and compatible with palletized barrels, totes, or custom setups.
✅ Barrel Dump Trough – Built for efficient, safe barrel emptying with integrated pneumatic lifting arms, dual filter screens, and rinse options for maximum recovery—including the “Devil’s Cut.” Custom-built for your facility’s needs.
Whether you’re working with bourbon, whiskey, rum, or other aged spirits, these systems are engineered to improve safety, efficiency, and process control in post-maturation and pre-maturation handling.
Every system is custom-built to meet your distillery’s layout and production goals. Learn more about our full range of distilling equipment.
Hey everybody, it’s Grant Layman here from Deutsche Beverage in Charlotte. I wanted to report back after our trip to CBC in Indianapolis a couple of weeks ago. We had several pieces of brewing and distilling equipment in the booth, and specifically, some barrel handling equipment that’s generated quite a bit of conversation lately.
As we’ve continued developing our distilling equipment, we’ve realized there’s growing market demand for better solutions in barrel handling—both post-maturation and pre-maturation on the filling side. There’s a clear need for a faster and safer way to fill and empty barrels. That’s where our newest development, the Fill and Draw System, comes in. We’ve seen that many companies are now filling barrels through the top, rather than the side, so our “Revolution One” solution is a split Fill and Draw System.
The unit we brought to CBC includes both a filling side and a draw side. On the filling side, it operates with a Class I, Div I explosion-proof pump that fills a barrel in about a minute—very quickly. This system is designed for top-fill, palletized barrels, allowing an operator to position a pallet of four barrels in front of the machine. Pneumatic lances lower into the barrels and articulate, making it easy to access all four barrels.
On the draw side, there’s a large vacuum pump in the back corner. We designed this vacuum pump to be capable of handling some solids—even though we filter char through another inline filter. We offer several filter options depending on the char levels you typically process. This vacuum pump can empty a barrel in about 2 to 3 minutes, depending on your compressor’s CFM.
The most important part: this system allows a single operator to fill and empty barrels safely—without relying on forklifts or gravity-fed setups. Every unit we build is fully customizable. This prototype is a split unit, but we can also design versions dedicated to filling or emptying only. For example, maybe you want to fill six barrels instead of four, or only fill totes—we can design that. Or, if you only need an emptying station and have a separate filling solution, we can build a dual draw system with two pumps feeding separate tanks or blending vessels.
Moving on to our Barrel Dump Trough, which we developed about a year and a half ago and has already generated strong interest. We’ve sold several units into large U.S. distilleries and are quoting projects globally. The original unit shown on our website is a single-barrel volume system. It includes a pneumatic lifting piston beneath an articulating arm that lifts a full 53-gallon barrel and rolls it over the trough. Pneumatic pistons lift and allow you to free-spin the barrel to position the bung directly over the trough.
The trough includes two interchangeable 30-micron screens to catch char. They’re removable so you can access the well underneath or keep them in place during dumping. This unit features a divider that splits the trough into two 26-gallon wells. The second well is designed for a secondary rinse—for example, to extract the “devil’s cut” using hot water or steam. Each well has its own drain, and an upper pipe connects both to a single outlet.
Some other customers have opted for single-well troughs without a divider, ideal for quickly dumping multiple barrels into a blending tank. Again, this is another customizable system built with operator safety in mind. A single person can roll a barrel up to the lift arm, empty it over the trough, and either use the exit ramp or lower it back to the ground.
We’re proud of how this equipment has come together and the positive feedback we’ve received. If you’re interested in learning more about our barrel handling solutions, visit our website.
