We recently replaced our old crappy dish drying rack after renovating the kitchen. I purposely looked for one that would be good for holding bottles upside down as well as buckets. I use bottling trees for bottling days, this is for cleaning used bottles before storing. One interesting feature is that it has a closeable drain. This comes in handy on bottling day ad I can use it to hold my sanitize bottling bucket etc. Then move it away to make room for a bottling tree without having it drip. It also folds up for storage but I leave it out.
For me $40 for an item I buy once every several years that I find useful because it does what I want instead of $15 or whatever for a piece of crap with plastic coated wire that breaks in weeks and gets moldy is a much better value. I find that oxo products last a long time, even in commercial kitchens.
We cook about every day so the dishwasher is rarely empty. In the rare case that its empty on bottling day I will use it as a bottling day but if we used it for both bottles and dishes we would be running it constantly.
Pete, I agree with your thoughts on being willing to pay more for quality, but my personal experiences with OXO have not convinced me that they are that much more durable. I worked in casual dining kitchens for almost 30 years, so I do like nice kitchen tools and have paid more for some useful items. I guess what I am saying is that I always felt that with OXO, I was paying for the name and not increased quality. It always takes up room on shelving at Bed Bah and Beyond type big box stores that I feel rely more on volume than quality. In the end though, I think the way you re-purposed it makes it worth while, anything to make bottling day easier is worth $$$ to me as a fellow bottler.
Yeah I have that problem, but i just move the dishes to the sink, and either wash them there if there aren’t many, or put them back after bottling. The fact that I can wash an even 48 bottles is enough incentive for me. Of course the fact that I’ve got a couple flip top bombers for leftovers and tasting doesn’t hurt.
Believe me Frank I’m the last person to get an overpriced brand name from a big box store. In fact I don’t even go to big box stores if I can help it. I looked at about every dish rack online and this was by far the best one for this purpose and is clearly better made than any I have seen. I wouldn’t recommend their products across the board but its been multiple times that I ended up getting one of their products for a commercial kitchen after trying various products that failed. I have one of their veggie peelers at home because it has a nice grip and I have big hands. I also have their salad spinner at home. Its a superior design and gets tons of use.